Christopher Nolan Solves The Odyssey Shoot at Favignana's Castello di Santa Caterina
Christopher Nolan is shooting the odyssey at the Castello di Santa Caterina on Favignana, and the location made the production work harder than a standard set build. The path up the ruined castle took 45 minutes to summit, so the crew had to split between people who could walk and the rest who went by helicopter.
One day late in 2024, Nolan hiked the hill himself while planning a production that would later send crews 900 feet up in the air for a two-week stretch. He said, "some moment of magic in a real place—a real sunset, a real castle."
Favignana's 45-minute climb
The castello sits on Favignana, an island in western Sicily that was once called Aegusa, or goat island. The path was paved, but it was not wide enough for a Christopher Nolan film set with people, equipment, and trucks, and Nolan said it was not possible to widen it.
His line producer spoke with local authorities about building a new road in the back, but Nolan said that road never materialized. "We would have used 4x4s to get the whole crew up," he said, before adding, "So in the end," the production moved to a mix of foot traffic and helicopters.
Helicopters and a mountain platform
The final setup used helicopters to move some of the crew and to ferry equipment up and down. Nolan also said the production built a lunch platform onto the side of the mountain using scaffolding that could hold the combined weight of 200 crewmembers.
"in the middle of our shoot, we had a location for two weeks where the crew had to start at the bottom of this path at call, go 900 feet up in the air, at whatever pace they could manage," he said. For a blockbuster, that is not just a scenic choice; it is a logistics choice that forces the production to budget time, transport, and manpower around the hill instead of around a backlot.
Pattinson and Holland on board
Robert Pattinson plays Antinous in The Odyssey, while Tom Holland plays Telemachus. Pattinson also described how Nolan handled a backwards-driving sequence during Tenet in Estonia, saying the original pod setup did not work with the cars on hand there.
"Well, I’ve used BMWs before with these pods, so let’s just go to the BMW dealership, just buy two BMWs right now, and we’re going to shoot," Pattinson said. "We only lost, like, 45 minutes." That kind of workaround matches the Favignana setup: when the landscape refuses to cooperate, Nolan appears to choose the fastest practical fix and keep rolling.
