Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer (2023)

‘Oppenheimer’ to screen in full-frame 70mm at Prague’s Cinema City Flora IMAX

Director Christopher Nolan‘s highly-anticipated film Oppenheimer will hit cinemas worldwide next month, and Prague’s IMAX cinema at Cinema City Flora will be the only one in continental Europe to screen the film in the director’s preferred format.

According to an official list published on IMAX.com, Oppenheimer will screen in 70mm IMAX at just 30 cinemas worldwide, with the majority of those – 25 – being in North American locations. Three 70mm IMAX prints of Oppenheimer will screen in the UK, one in Australia, and the final one in Prague.

“IMAX film brings images to life,” the director stated in a press release for IMAX. “From resolution and color to sharpness and overall quality, there is nothing compared to using IMAX film cameras. The IMAX film format is the Gold Standard of motion picture photography.”

Other IMAX cinemas worldwide will screen Oppenheimer, but only the 30 listed above, including Prague’s Cinema City Flora location, will screen the film on 15 perf / 70mm film, which will blow up the image to a full-frame 1.43:1 aspect ratio and allow audiences to see the movie as its director intended.

The 70mm IMAX print of Oppenheimer is a pretty big deal, as a new film format was invented just to make it. Nolan wanted to shoot the film in both color and black-and-white, but previous films had retrofitted any monochrome black-and-white footage for IMAX, which didn’t accommodate for the format.

In order to make Oppenheimer as authentically as possible, Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema asked Kodak and Fotokem to invent a new film format for the movie.

“I very much loved the structural assistance and the aesthetic charge of shifting between color and black and white that I had on Memento,” Nolan told Total Film last year.

“I’d always been looking for a reason to go back to that. And in the case of Oppenheimer and the way in which we tell this story, it’s very subjectively told, but also with a more objective story strand that intertwines with that. It was really the perfect time to go back to that device that I loved so much.”

“So we challenged the people at Kodak and Fotokem to make this work for us. And they stepped up. For the first time ever, we were able to shoot IMAX film in black-and-white. And the results were thrilling and extraordinary. As soon as Hoyte and I saw the first tests come in, we just knew that this was a format that we were immediately in love with.”

Nolan’s Oppenheimer tells the story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. In addition to Cillian Murphy as the title character, the film also stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and many others.

Oppenheimer will release in Prague cinemas from July 20. Advance tickets for the 70mm IMAX release at Cinema City Flora IMAX are not yet available for pre-sale.

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Jason Pirodsky

Jason Pirodsky has been writing about the Prague film scene and reviewing films in print and online media since 2005. A member of the Online Film Critics Society, you can also catch his musings on life in Prague at expats.cz and tips on mindfulness sourced from ancient principles at MaArtial.com.

7 Responses

  1. Hi!
    Just wondering, when can we buy advanced tickets for the Oppenheimer 70 mm release in Prague? I’m in Europe just for the summer and I don’t want to miss the release 😭

  2. Hi Jason,
    I’m planning to come to Prague with my partner for both his birthday and the movie 🙂
    Two questions: in your opinion, a long will the movie be played? Do you think that it will be done a projection with English Subtitles?
    Thanks a lot!
    Sal

    1. Hi Sal,

      Oppenheimer will be shown in English with Czech subtitles — but no English -subtitled screenings. It should play through at least August 10 (Gran Turismo releases) and possibly longer based on demand 🙂

  3. Wow, this news has got me extremely excited! As a film enthusiast, I can’t express how thrilled I am to see “Oppenheimer” being screened in full-frame 70mm at Cinema City Flora IMAX in Prague. This is an incredible opportunity to appreciate the cinematic masterpiece in its full glory, immersing ourselves in the rich visuals and experiencing the film exactly as intended by the director. Thank you, Prague Reporter, for sharing this wonderful news with us. I can’t wait to grab my popcorn and enjoy this unforgettable screening. Jeanne Day

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