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I watched the first film by Christopher Nolan, the British no-budget production Follwing and was amazed: His debut is the core of all his films! In Following, we notice Nolan's penchant for a nested narrative structure with a twist at the end - in which ultimately all pieces appear as a whole. In a different context of meaning, of course! Sometimes you might wonder how necessary individual passages may have been for the big picture - but in any case they contribute to the fact that Following is simply fun! When we opened the Videothek Filmkunst (or today Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo) ten years ago, we didn't have many titles yet. Still, people came to borrow the stuff that didn't exist in other video stores. One of these "neighbourhood blockbusters" was Following. Constantly lent, always in circulation! Rightly so: the thriller is intelligent, aesthetic and very entertaining! Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is a lonely and neglected writer. He follows people on the street, in search of material for his (possibly never appearing?) book. In truth, Bill is obsessively searching for what he lacks: his own identity. One of his subjects, Cobb, confronts him. Cobb (Alex Haw) is a burglar who is less interested in prey than in the privacy of his victims. Cobb now teaches Bill and commits burglaries with him. In an apartment they find photos of a beautiful blonde (Lucy Russel) - again Bill reacts passionately and falls in love with the unknown. His teacher Cobb spies on Bill on his own and finally speaks to her in a bar. She tells him that she is being blackmailed. Bill decides to help her... On the surface Following is told more or less linearly. A second level of action seems to take place in the narrator's consciousness, as if his story is taken over... The moment he puts the individual parts together, we see what really happened. The big twist, it doesn't develop many of the narrative strands any further, nor does it enlighten them. Still, it's a nice ending point. By the way, Nolan himself was in charge of the camera and is responsible for the dirty, grainy black-and-white photography that makes up so much of the film's effect. Let's remember the scene in the bar, which is so dark that we basically have to think about most of it. With Following we see a 28-year-old filmmaker, already in full possession of his powers - without a budget, but with ideas! And what is the thriller about now? From a would-be writer who gets a lesson about human nature? Just about picking anyone out of the crowd and constructing a story around them? A story that works quite differently than it seems? A film about the process of storytelling itself? Or what do you think?