Following
By Kit Macdonald
Christopher Nolan has gone on to direct the likes of Oppenheimer, The Dark Knight Rises and Dunkirk, commanding huge budgets and the best in cutting-edge effects and filmmaking techniques. In 1998, however, while he was still in his late twenties, he proved he could do great things with very little indeed. Following was shot in black and white on an astonishingly tiny budget of $6,000, and its excellence makes it a bona fide masterclass in economic filmmaking.
At the story's centre is a struggling writer, played by Jeremy Theobald, who obsessively follows strangers for inspiration. His curiosity leads him to Cobb (Alex Haw), a charismatic thief who draws him into a world of burglary and deception, eventually entangling the protagonist in his schemes. The rest of the story unfolds in fragmented, non-linear fashion and explores ideas of identity, voyeurism and manipulation - fans of Nolan's Memento and Inception should be able to draw plenty of lines back from those films to this.