Christopher Nolan”s next feature, Dunkirk, begins principal photography on Monday 23 May, with a stellar cast including Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and Harry Styles.

Fiilming will run in France for around five weeks before moving to the Netherlands for a month and the UK for just under a week.

Nolan directs from his own screenplay, which centres on the famous Allied evacuation which took place from 27 May – 4 June 1940.

More than 800 vessels were scrambled for the emergency manoeuvre, codenamed Operation Dynamo. Later known as the ‘little ships of Dunkirk”, these included fishing boats, pleasure craft and merchant marine boats.

A total of 338,226 soldiers were rescued in just eight days, with Churchill calling the evacuation “a miracle of deliverance” in his iconic “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech of 4 June 1940.

Nolan produces alongside his regular collaborator Emma Thomas. More details can be found on our subscription site, Production Intelligence. Non-sbuscribers can click here for a demo.

Tom Hardy photo via Getty Images Ent/Max Mumby/Indigo.