Christopher Edward Nolan (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. Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000). 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). This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023).