Christopher Edward Nolan CBE (born 30 July 1970) is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. He has received many accolades and his films have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide, ranking him among the highest-grossing directors. In 2015, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and in 2024, he was honoured with the British Film Institute Fellowship.

Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He transitioned from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010); the last of these earned Nolan two Oscar nominations—Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020). For the war drama Dunkirk, he earned two Academy Award nominations, including his first for Best Director. Parting ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures, Nolan signed with Universal Pictures for the biopic Oppenheimer (2023), which won him a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Direction.

Nolan’s work regularly features in the listings of best films of their respective decades. Infused with a metaphysical outlook, his films thematise epistemology, existentialism, ethics, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. They feature mathematically-inspired images and concepts, unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format film photography, and materialistic perspectives. He has co-written several of his films with his brother, Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife, Emma Thomas.