When Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated new feature *The Odyssey* hit global box offices and smashed opening weekend records, it sparked an unexpected tourism boom in the heart of Central Europe. Thousands of movie enthusiasts from across the continent are flocking to the Czech capital Prague, home to one of the EU’s only two working 70mm IMAX screens — the gold standard of analog film projection Nolan champions as the ultimate viewing experience for his first feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras.
Only 41 operational 70mm IMAX screens exist worldwide, the vast majority concentrated in North America. Across the European Union, just two other cities — Montpellier, France and Brussels, Belgium — host the rare equipment, with an additional three screens located in the United Kingdom. That leaves Prague’s Screen 7 at Cinema City as a rare destination for dedicated fans eager to see Nolan’s latest work as the director intended.
For many lovers of large-format film, the trip is worth every mile of travel. Daniel Jung, a visitor from Norway, spent three days driving across Denmark and Germany with his two teenage sons just to secure access to the rare screening. His son Leo, who had followed the cinema’s social media and coordinated with staff via email six months ahead of the July 16 premiere, snapped up premium central seats the moment tickets went on sale.
“Everything was so much larger than the small screens we have back home,” Leo explained after the screening. “This is an experience I’ll remember forever.” Even with the long round trip, his brother Felix noted the effort was fully worthwhile, even without the side sightseeing stops the family added along the route. Polish visitor Nicolas Walak, who had already watched *The Odyssey* on a standard digital screen, echoed that sentiment, saying the 70mm IMAX format completely transformed his appreciation of the film.
To keep up with overwhelming cross-regional demand, Cinema City’s Prague branch has ramped up programming, scheduling four to five screenings daily — including a late midnight showing — and the vast majority of showings have sold out completely. As of the first Monday following the premiere, more than 22,000 moviegoers from roughly 15 European countries, ranging from Scandinavia in the north to Spain in the south, had already seen the film at the venue.
The rarity of 70mm IMAX screenings today stems from steep operational costs and logistical hurdles that pushed most theaters to swap analog projection for digital equipment starting in the late 2000s. IMAX film cameras are notoriously heavy, and custom modified low-noise models had to be developed specifically for *The Odyssey*. The finished film print itself weighs roughly 660 pounds and stretches 11 miles long, requiring it to be shipped and assembled in multiple segments. The projection room must be strictly climate-controlled to protect the film, and only projectionists certified by IMAX are allowed to operate the equipment.
What makes Prague’s rare screen possible is a lucky decision by former venue staff more than a decade ago. When cinemas around the world began replacing analog projectors with digital systems in 2008, the Prague Cinema City team opted not to discard the original 70mm IMAX hardware. The projector was stored in a back corner for three years, before being pulled back into service for Nolan’s 2012 blockbuster *The Dark Knight Rises*. It has since been used to screen every one of Nolan’s subsequent large-format features, including 2014’s *Interstellar* and 2023’s *Oppenheimer*. For current certified projectionist Tomáš Vyšinský, that decision to preserve the equipment is one the global film community owes the previous team gratitude for.
As *The Odyssey* continues to post record-breaking box office numbers — notching an $87 million haul in its second weekend, the strongest second-weekend performance of Nolan’s entire career — the stream of traveling film fans to Prague shows no sign of slowing down, proving that for dedicated cinephiles, the analog film experience is irreplaceable.