You know Christopher Nolan, and by now you might have seen his latest movie, Dunkirk. But did you know that even though the film just came out this week, Nolan first had the idea for it 25 years ago? It all started when Nolan and his wife and collaborator Emma Thomas took a boat ride across the English Channel. Choppy seas and bad weather made the trip take 19 hours. The hellish conditions made Nolan think that the setting and the subject would make a great movie. That’s just one of the facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

At just 106 minutes, Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s shortest movie ever. Its script was only 76 pages, in part because the film contains so little dialogue, which made it literally half the length of a typical Nolan script. Nolan decided to keep the words to a minimum, to make the characters as universal as possible, so that the audience would identify with them on a basic Hitchcockian level of suspense.

You Think You Know Movies? is a ScreenCrush original series that dives deep into the cinematic worlds of your favorite movies and freeze frames a few tidbits you might not have known. We’ve already tackled Star WarsThe Avengers and Spider-Man, but this time we’re stranded on a beach in France with a whole bunch of Dunkirk facts. Watch more installments of ‘You Think You Know Movies?’ below and let us know in the comments what movies we should cover next!

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