Christopher Nolan's Forgotten Debut 'Following' Is Now Free to Stream

Few directors in modern Hollywood have ascended quite as swiftly or as completely as Christopher Nolan, whose career compressed the usual decade of dues-paying into just a handful of years. What makes that trajectory even more remarkable is how little primary source material exists from his formative period — which is precisely what makes his 1998 debut feature, Following, such a valuable and underappreciated document.

A Career That Left Almost No Early Trail

As Polygon notes, Nolan's rise was genuinely unusual by industry standards. Memento (2000) was only his second film, and it arrived as a fully realized, structurally audacious thriller that announced him as a major talent almost overnight. Insomnia followed in 2002, then Batman Begins in 2005 — four films and he was already a household name. Most filmmakers accumulate years of music videos, television episodes, or low-budget genre work before anyone pays serious attention. Nolan, by contrast, left almost nothing in his wake. If you want to understand where he came from before Memento, there is exactly one place to look. With [The Odyssey](/ article/tom-holland-reflects-on-challenging-first-day-with-nolan-in-the-odyssey) now generating considerable anticipation, the timing to revisit that single data point feels particularly right.

What 'Following' Actually Is

Following centers on Bill (Jeremy Theobald), a directionless, unemployed writer who has developed an unsettling pastime: shadowing strangers through the streets of London with no particular motive beyond curiosity and idleness. When one of those strangers — a confident, self-possessed burglar named Cobb (Alex Haw) — notices he's being tailed, the encounter sends Bill's life down a sharply deteriorating path. Cobb draws him into the world of petty theft, framing it as a logical extension of Bill's existing voyeurism. The pull proves irresistible, and the consequences arrive swiftly.

Shot on 16mm black-and-white film with a microbudget that imposed its own creative logic, Following carries the visual grammar and moral atmosphere of classic postwar noir — the kind of lean, fatalistic storytelling associated with films like Sunset Boulevard or Angels With Dirty Faces. The one conspicuous departure from that tradition is that the film plays out almost entirely in daylight, a pragmatic necessity since Nolan couldn't afford artificial lighting. The shadows so essential to the genre's identity are simply absent, giving Following a stark, exposed quality that feels distinctly its own.

A Restrained Nolan You May Not Recognize

For viewers who know Nolan primarily through the architectural complexity of Inception or the temporal mechanics of Tenet, Following may feel surprisingly direct. The nonlinear storytelling that would define Memento and much of his subsequent work is present here only in embryonic form. What Following demonstrates instead is a filmmaker working with discipline and economy — extracting maximum tension from minimal resources, letting character and situation carry the narrative weight. It is Nolan at his most elemental, and that restraint is itself instructive.

It's worth noting, given Nolan's consistent advocacy for emerging talent, that Following belongs to a specific and cherished tradition of genuinely independent cinema — low-cost, high-concept films made outside any studio infrastructure. In that regard it sits comfortably alongside Clerks, El Mariachi, and The Blair Witch Project as a testament to what committed filmmakers can accomplish with almost nothing. Nolan has spoken publicly about his belief in young filmmakers, and Following is the biographical evidence behind that conviction.

Where to Watch

The film is currently available for free through Kanopy, the library-affiliated streaming service accessible with a public library card, and is also streaming via AMC+. Given that Following runs under an hour and offers a genuinely rare window into the earliest instincts of one of contemporary cinema's most deliberate craftsmen — a director whose approach to collaboration continues to generate conversation — the investment of time required is minimal and the return considerable. It won't transform your understanding of Oppenheimer, but it might deepen your appreciation for how intentional Nolan's evolution has always been.

Related on Ni4o: How Christopher Nolan Convinced Ryan Coogler to Shoot 'Sinners' in IMAX