In 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers have retreated to Dunkirk. Tommy, a young British private, is the sole survivor of a German ambush. At the beach, he finds thousands of troops awaiting evacuation and meets Gibson, who is burying a body. After a Luftwaffe dive bomber attack, they attempt to get aboard a hospital ship, but are ordered off. The ship is sunk by dive bombers; Tommy saves another soldier, Alex. They get aboard a destroyer, only to have it torpedoed and sunk before it can depart.

With a single, vulnerable mole available for embarking on deep-draft ships, the Royal Navy requisitions civilian vessels in Great Britain that can get to the beach. In Weymouth, a civilian sailor Dawson, with his son Peter, sets out on his boat Moonstone, rather than let the Navy commandeer her. Their teenage hand George impulsively joins them.

At sea, they rescue a shivering shell-shocked soldier from a wrecked ship. When he realises that Dawson is sailing for Dunkirk, the soldier demands that they turn back and tries to wrest control of the boat; in the scuffle, George suffers a head injury that renders him blind. Elsewhere, three Spitfires, tasked with defending the evacuation, cross the English Channel. After their leader is shot down in a dogfight, one of the pilots, Farrier, assumes command, but the other Spitfire is hit and ditches. Its pilot, Collins, is rescued by Moonstone.

Tommy, Alex and Gibson join some soldiers of a Highlanders regiment and hide inside a beached trawler in the intertidal zone outside the Allied perimeter, waiting for the rising tide to refloat it. During the wait, German troops start shooting at the boat for target practice, and water enters through the bullet holes. Alex, hoping to lighten the boat, accuses Gibson, who has stayed silent, of being a German spy.

Gibson reveals he is French; he stole the identity of the dead British soldier he buried, hoping to be evacuated with the British. The group abandons the boat when it begins to sink, but Gibson is entangled in a chain and drowns. When a nearby minesweeper is sunk by a bomber, Moonstone manoeuvres to take on those in the water, including Tommy and Alex. Peter discovers that George is dead. Asked by the shell-shocked soldier, he lies and says that George will be fine.

Farrier reaches Dunkirk just as his fuel runs out. Gliding over the beach, he shoots down a dive-bomber, saving ships and troops, and lands beyond the perimeter. He sets fire to his plane before being taken prisoner by the Germans. In all, over 300,000 men are evacuated. Royal Navy Commander Bolton stays to oversee the evacuation of the French. Arriving back in Weymouth, the shell-shocked soldier sees George's body being carried away. Tommy and Alex board a train, and receive a hero's welcome when the train arrives in Woking. Tommy reads Churchill’s address to the House of Commons citing the “miracle of deliverance” in Dunkirk.

The film was noted for its generally realistic representation of the historical evacuation. It accurately depicts a few Royal Air Force planes dogfighting the Luftwaffe over the sea, limited to one hour of operation by their fuel capacity. In 1940, destroyers and fighter planes were indeed held back from battle, as the Royal Navy and Air Force would have been the sole defenders against invasion. Also noted were the accurate depictions of how a small boat attempted to evade aerial attack, and of how soldiers returning to England saw a civilian population largely unaware of or unaffected by the war.British officers did initially refuse to evacuate French soldiers, although Churchill later insisted that the French be evacuated alongside the British.[191] The realism of the film was acknowledged by Dunkirk veterans, although Branagh said that some thought it was "louder than the battle".

Although some events are based on true history, the characters and the storyline are fictional; Branagh's role is a composite character.When the beach scenes were shot, the weather was worse than during the real evacuation; Nolan explained that this helped to understand the danger faced by the pleasure boats.In one scene, an officer gives a salute without wearing his military beret, which a veteran pointed out as inaccurate protocol.To differentiate the German planes, their noses were painted yellow; this was not actually done until a month after Dunkirk.The involvement of French, African and Indian soldiers was either limited or left out in the film, whereas 40,000 French soldiers died during the battle to let the British and 120,000 French soldiers leave France for England.Contemporary shots were used for aerial views of the town, whereas Dunkirk was in ruins by the time of the evacuation. The design of the airborne leaflet propaganda was similar to those used in 1940, although the originals were not in colour.

Hans Zimmer began working on the score in 2016,continued for eleven months, and eventually created a 100-minute demo.For intensity, the script was written to accommodate the auditory illusion of a Shepard tone, which had previously been explored in Nolan's 2006 film The Prestige. This was coupled with the sound of Nolan's own pocket watch, which he recorded and sent to Zimmer to be synthesised.[88][95] Additional music was provided by Lorne Balfe, Andrew Kawczynski, Steve Mazzaro, and Benjamin Wallfisch.

"Nimrod" from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations is part of the theme,which was slowed down to six beats per minute with added bass notes to avoid it sounding sentimental. Instrumentation included a double bass and fourteen cellos played in high register. King relayed to Zimmer the sound of a boat engine, which served as a reference for the tempo.Zimmer visited the Dunkirk set for inspiration, taking back a jar of sand,and chose not to view raw footage whilst composing.The music was recorded at AIR Lyndhurst Hall with mix engineer Geoff Foster.

Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II. Its ensemble cast includes Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Tom Hardy. The film was distributed by Warner Bros.