Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas (2012) is an epic science-fiction drama written and directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Lilly Wachowski, based on David Mitchell’s 2004 novel. The film is built from six interwoven stories set across different centuries and genres, moving from a 19th-century Pacific voyage to 1930s Europe, 1970s San Francisco, present-day Britain, a futuristic Neo Seoul and a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Many of the same actors, including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon, appear in multiple roles across the different storylines. The film explores recurring ideas of connection, oppression, memory, reincarnation and moral consequence, using its large structure to suggest that individual actions echo across time.

Cloud Atlas was filmed mainly in Germany, Scotland and Spain, with the production using a wide range of real locations and studio work to create its different eras and fictional worlds. Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam was a major production base, providing controlled sets for several of the film’s historical and futuristic sections. Other German locations included Berlin, Düsseldorf and the Saxon Switzerland landscape, with Krematorium Baumschulenweg in Berlin used for Sonmi-451’s execution scene. Scotland was used extensively, with Glasgow doubling for both 1970s San Francisco and 2012 London, while Edinburgh locations such as the Scott Monument and West Princes Street Gardens appear in the film’s British material. Glasgow City Chambers and Glasgow University were also among the Scottish locations connected to the production. Mallorca in Spain provided several of the film’s most open and coastal landscapes, including Port de Sóller, and was used especially for material connected to the Pacific and post-apocalyptic sections. Because Cloud Atlas moves between so many times and places, its location identity is deliberately fragmented: German studios and architecture, Scottish city streets, Spanish coastlines and digital world-building are combined to create a film where one real location may stand in for several different countries, centuries or futures.