Which university has been a filming location for several Christopher Nolan movies?

Even though British cinema was thriving in the 1990s while Christopher Nolan was gearing up to become a filmmaker, he ultimately opted to go down the Hollywood route. His first two features, Following and Memento, might have been independent movies, but it didn’t take him long to receive offers to direct much larger productions, allowing him to become one of the most well-known filmmakers this side of the new millennium.

Nolan rose to widespread prominence after he was given the opportunity to helm the Batman trilogy, starring Christian Bale as the titular character and Heath Ledger as the Joker. The Dark Knight, released in 2008, received particular acclaim, with many critics lauding it as one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. From there, he has continued to make movies that all receive massive amounts of attention, from Inception and Interstellar to the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.

The filmmaker has always loved cinema, using old cameras and toys to make his own movies as a child. He fell in love with the expansiveness of sci-fi cinema, where completely new worlds could play out in front of audiences and look utterly realistic.

His love of cinema could have led him to study film at university, but instead, he chose English. He attended University College London (UCL), spending most of his time outside of lectures familiarising himself with the university’s filming equipment, making short films and screening films for other students. In a piece for The Guardian, Matthew Tempest recalled his memories of being in the UCL film club with Nolan.

“It was pretty obvious to anyone at the University College London film society in the early 1990s (which comprised about half a dozen of us in a windowless, airless basement) that Chris Nolan was going places. I thought his career might even go all the way, and he might shoot a few adverts before eventually (if he got lucky) directing episodes of The Bill and Coronation Street.”

What are Christopher Nolan’s favourite filming locations?

His time at UCL was formative, allowing Nolan to finally access proper cameras and other equipment while also meeting like-minded people, including his future wife, Emma Thomas. Thus, he has paid homage to the university in several of his movies, using certain buildings as filming locations.

Tempest explained, “In fact, Chris has been rather touchingly dedicated in paying tribute to UCL. It’s there as a location in Inception – standing in as the Paris architecture school in the lecture and library scenes – while the nearby Senate House building features in Batman Begins.”

In 2010’s Inception, not only did Nolan use the Main Library, but the Front Quad and the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre were also featured in the film. Meanwhile, Senate House can also been seen in The Dark Knight.

It seems as though UCL is a favourite spot for Nolan, who has come back to the university several times during his career to pay tribute to the place that helped shape him into a filmmaker. In general, Nolan frequently returns to England to film his movies, even if they feature big Hollywood casts.

When it came to Tenet, however, Nolan filmed the movie in seven different countries, including Estonia and India. He has also filmed various movies, like The Prestige, Memento, and Oppenheimer in California – in and around Hollywood itself.

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