Christopher Nolan was 7 years old when he went to see Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey” in London with his father. He was gobsmacked.

“You sit there and you just go, ‘This is a film that’s not observing any conventions,’” Mr. Nolan said in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

Four decades later, Mr. Nolan has himself been compared to Kubrick for a similarly meticulous approach to filmmaking and a taste for ambitious productions like “Interstellar.” He shrugs off those comparisons — Mr. Nolan said he’s just a fan — but for his latest project, he put himself directly in Kubrick’s shoes. On Saturday, he’s going to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time to screen a restored 70-millimeter print of Kubrick’s seminal work to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

But calling it a restoration, Mr. Nolan said, isn’t quite right. He prefers “unrestored.”

Mr. Nolan set out last fall to recreate the experience audiences had in 1968, allowing moviegoers today to see the epic exactly as Kubrick intended. His goal meant there would be no digital manipulation in the new version but the occasional visible scratch would be allowed to slip through. In a world of high-definition and 4K resolution, Mr. Nolan is, in effect, time-traveling to the days of analog. Think of it as listening to a classic record on vinyl, with pops and all.