In Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus embarks on an epic journey spanning oceans, monsters and gods to return home to his family. In a remarkable parallel, Christopher Nolan’s fans are embarking on epic journeys of their own to see his adaptation of The Odyssey in one of the few surviving Imax 1570 cinemas around the world, the Oscar-winning film-maker’s preferred format.

Nolan has long been a champion of Imax 1570 film, the highest-resolution film format in existence, named for the width of the film stock (70mm) and the 15 perforations on each frame. The Odyssey is the first feature film ever shot entirely on 1570 cameras, which are notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading; the film stock had to be changed every three minutes during the Odyssey shoot, with Nolan working with Imax to develop a soundproofing “blimp” to house the 180kg camera to make it quiet enough for him to record dialogue on 1570 for the first time.

But 1570 is old technology; most cinemas shifted to digital around a decade ago, which means there are now only 41 cinemas in the whole world capable of projecting the format. These include the Imax in Melbourne, Australia, which removed its film projector in 2015 but bought it back two years later when Nolan appealed to Imax cinemas around the world to show his 2017 film Dunkirk on 1570.

Now, ahead of The Odyssey’s release this week, Nolan fans are heading down under from places as far flung as Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Los Angeles to watch the film at Imax Melbourne, which is the only cinema in the southern hemisphere with a 1570 reel of The Odyssey. The enormous reel runs more than 17km, weighs 240kg, and is, as Imax Melbourne’s technical manager Dan Drobik says, “a precious commodity”.

“We are only one of 41 cinemas across the globe [where] you can see it in the way that Nolan created the film,” says Imax Melbourne general manager Jeremy Fee. “There’s only seven outside of North America in the entire world, so people do seek out that really special experience. They can’t really see this anywhere else.

“We’re seeing more people travel than ever. We have people who built their holidays around their Odyssey screening, which is pretty incredible.”

Melbourne’s Imax is also the largest 1.43:1 cinema screen in the world, measuring 32m wide by 23m high (roughly as tall as a seven storey building). When tickets for The Odyssey first went on sale – a year ago – it sold more than 17,000 tickets in under 24 hours. They have since sold more than 30,000 tickets; The Odyssey is already their eighth biggest film of all time, before it has even opened.

Christian Wächter, 45, and his wife, Romy Demeter, 42, have travelled from Germany to Indonesia for a work trip, but are heading to Melbourne especially to see The Odyssey on 1570 at the Imax – twice.

“People have asked, why would you take that plane to Melbourne and see a movie? Because it’s the biggest 1570 screen in the world,” Wächter says. “There is a bigger Imax screen in Germany but it’s digital, so you don’t have the full peripheral vision. That’s why we prefer to go to Melbourne.”

Many sports fans wouldn’t think twice about spending huge sums to attend the World Cup, Wimbledon or the Formula One – so doing so for a film isn’t so strange, he argues: “They spend thousands and we’re just paying a small amount, but for a cultural experience. I think it makes sense. It’s not like we are totally crazy.”

Not everyone understands the fervour Nolan inspires. “I told my grandma about it. She is 87 now. And she was just laughing. She didn’t say anything. She was just laughing and said, ‘oh, my God, you both,’” says Demeter.

“My 70-year-old father is like, ‘What?’ He cannot really grasp it, because he didn’t grow up with that kind of cinema. But my sister and our friends, of course they understand it,” Wächter adds.

As a 1570 projectionist, Drobik compares 1570 film to digital in the same way audiophiles prize vinyl over CDs. “They are both playing you the same song, but one is a much earthier, richer, sort of natural feeling,” he says, adding: “[1570] is the highest resolution you can project in, but it still has that sense of warmth and feeling to it that, I think, is lost to a degree with some of the digital content that is played everywhere.”

Projecting on 1570 is far more fiddly and expensive – Drobik has to stay close to the projector for the entirety of every Odyssey screening, “listening away, hearing out for anything that might sound out of the ordinary” – but its scarcity means that “people are willing to pay to come experience something like that and put their phones away”. Increasingly, audience members ask to visit him in the projection booth: “It can feel very isolating up in the projection booth. So it’s very humbling to know people have travelled so far just to come and see the film in this format. It’s great.”

The rise of Nolan’s career correlates with 1570’s mini comeback: the number of cinemas able to project 1570 film has risen from 30 to 41 globally since the release of Oppenheimer three years ago, while at the same time several auteur film-makers are returning to shooting on film.

“A lot of other film-makers are now shooting in 35mm, in 70mm, VistaVision – we projected One Battle After Another here, which was filmed on VistaVision and still looked incredible,” says Fee. “It is something people can’t experience on their TV or on smaller screens. And it’s the quality and the real sort of authorship, I think, that certain film-makers want to project and they want to show.”

Fee says Nolan’s passion has also driven audiences, particularly younger viewers, to become more aware of film formats: “What I’ve seen, for this film in particular, even more so than Oppenheimer, is a huge groundswell of people understanding the difference between film formats and filming methodologies. I’ve never seen anything like it. The Odyssey has been above and beyond in terms of hype and knowledge. Film formats are almost leading the discussion in terms of where to seek out a film – that is really new.”

1570 screenings for older films, like Nolan’s 2014 Interstellar, are also more popular now than when they were released. “Interstellar sells out [now] more than it did then because people know how precious it is and how important these singular experiences are,” says Drobik.

Like many Nolan fans, Wächter respects his talents enough to seek out his films in the format he wants: “He shoots and finishes his film with this format in mind. This is the way you should watch that movie – nothing else makes sense.”