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Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-13:16

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Christopher Nolan

, undisputed creator of

Hollywood

hits whose ambitious productions seduce mass audiences and cult followers alike, has finally confirmed his artistic excellence this Sunday by triumphing at the

Oscars

with

Oppenheimer

.

The British-American filmmaker, an obsessively punctual and tea-loving perfectionist known for combining inventive, intellectual tinkering with an emphasis on realism, has received the

Oscar

for

best director

.

To know more

Chronicle.

Oppenheimer sweeps the Oscars for best film, director and actors in a year full of cinema

  • Editor: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Madrid

Oppenheimer sweeps the Oscars for best film, director and actors in a year full of cinema

Spanish nominees.

Neither The Snow Society nor Robot Dreams: Spain leaves empty at the Oscars

  • Editor: PABLO SCARPELLINI Los Angeles

Neither The Snow Society nor Robot Dreams: Spain leaves empty at the Oscars

"To the academy, just say that cinema is just over 100 years old. I mean, imagine being there for 100 years in painting or theater. We don't know where this incredible journey is going. But knowing that they think I'm a important part means a lot to me," said the filmmaker when receiving the

Oscar

.

It is the high point of a career that has taken

Christopher Nolan

from darling of artistic productions (

Memento

), to savior of superheroes (

Batman

's

Dark Knight

trilogy ), to rare purveyor of original science fiction (

Inception

or

Interstellar

) in a market plagued by sequels.

Christopher Nolan

, 53, has come close to

Oscar

glory in the past, most notably with his 2017 epic

Dunkirk

.

But the director, sometimes branded by critics as a master technician and genre filmmaker more than a true visionary auteur, had never won an

Oscar

before

Oppenheimer

, which swept seven statuettes this Sunday.

Born in 1970 and the son of a British advertising man and an American airline stewardess,

Nolan

had a particular transatlantic childhood.

After seeing

Star Wars

and

2001: A Space Odyssey

at the movies when he was seven,

Nolan

quickly began making movies on his father's old Super 8 camera.

After studying at boarding school, he graduated in English literature from

University College

London, which he chose partly for its audiovisual facilities.

There he set up a film production company with his future producer and wife,

Emma Thomas

, with whom he moved to

Los Angeles

after finishing his studies.

Nolan

rose to fame at the age of 30 with

Memento

, an avant-garde, intelligent and sinuous crime film, with a non-linear narrative that has become his trademark.

It was a hit at festivals and his script earned him his first

Oscar

nomination .

His big-budget directorial debut was

Insomnia

(2002), starring

Al Pacino

as a Los Angeles police officer sent to Alaska to investigate a murder.

Veteran director

Steven Soderbergh

had recommended

Nolan

to Warner Bros., and later revealed details of a conversation he had with

Pacino

on the

film's

set .

"I can tell you right now, at some point in the near future, I'm going to be very proud to say that I was 'in a Christopher Nolan movie,'"

Pacino

told

Soderbergh

.

The film's success allowed

Nolan

to propose his gritty, realistic vision for the new

Batman

films the studio was planning.

Batman Begins

gave rise to a trilogy of films directed by

Christopher Nolan

, with

Christian Bale

in the role of the masked hero.

The second part,

Batman: The Dark Knight

, is often considered the best superhero movie ever made.

It was the first to raise $1 billion and the first to generate a posthumous

Oscar

for best actor, which went to

Heath Ledger

for his portrayal of The

Joker

.

The third,

The Dark Knight

, won less praise, but became the biggest commercial success of his career, which has already accumulated more than 6 billion at the box office.

In between, Nolan released

The Big Trick

, a period thriller about the duel between two magicians - played by

Christian Bale

and

Hugh Jackman

-, and

Inception

.

The latter, a wildly ambitious thriller in which

Leonardo DiCaprio

and

Marion Cotillard

jump between chained dream worlds, cemented

Nolan

's reputation as a unique Hollywood filmmaker who could command big budgets and total creative control for original films, and still generate profit.

It won four

Oscars

, including one for its stunning visual effects, and returned the nomination to Nolan, his first individual since

Memento

.

His next original science fiction production,

Interstellar

, won another

Oscar

for visual effects and began his collaboration with theoretical physicist

Kip Thorne

.

The director then looked to the past with

Dunkirk

, a taut account of the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from a beach in northern France during World War II.

The film brought him his first nomination for

best director

, and its setting in the 1940s foreshadowed

Oppenheimer

.

His next film,

Tenet

, another ambitious science fiction production, brought him an interest in nuclear destruction.

But it was reading

American Prometheus

, the Pulitzer-winning 2005 biography of the father of the atomic bomb,

J. Robert Oppenheimer

, that set him on the path that would ultimately bring him Oscar glory.