Stream of the Day
‘Tenet’ weaponises time on Netflix
The Oscar-winning sci-fi film, now streaming, follows a battle to stop a future threat from destroying the present.
Tenet, a movie about technology that can send people and objects backwards through time, is streaming on Netflix from today (17 July 2026).
The 2020 science-fiction thriller, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, won an Academy Award for visual effects. The movie became one of Nolan’s most debated works, with its technical ambition and complex storytelling attracting both praise and criticism.
The story shifts between international espionage and large action sequences, including a motorway chase shown from different directions in time and an operation in which two teams approach the same battle from opposite temporal paths.
The film continues Nolan’s interest in stories shaped by time, memory and unusual narrative structures.
John David Washington stars as an unnamed CIA operative recruited into a secret organisation working to stop an attack connected to the future that could destroy the present. His mission leads the Protagonist to Neil, played by Robert Pattinson, and Priya, an arms dealer portrayed by Dimple Kapadia. Their search centres on Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, who can communicate with people in the future and has gained access to “inverted weapons”.
Kenneth Branagh plays Sator, while Elizabeth Debicki portrays his estranged wife Kat. The cast includes Michael Caine and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema filmed the production across several countries, while Ludwig Göransson composed a score designed around reversed and distorted sounds.
Tenet releases on Netflix on the same day that Nolan’s new film The Odyssey opens in cinemas. The two productions share several collaborators, including Pattinson, van Hoytema, Göransson and editor Jennifer Lame, but exchange inverted time for an ancient journey across mythological seas.
