Before Christopher Nolan grew to become a celebrated director — earlier than “Inception” penetrated the land of goals, “Interstellar” performed with the legal guidelines of physics and “Tenet” warped all sense of chronology — there was “Larceny.”

In 1995, Nolan directed “Larceny” with a bunch of mates he had met by the movie society at University College London. It is about eight minutes lengthy, was shot in black and white with 16-millimeter cameras and entails an condo housebreaking.

That is basically all the general public details about the movie. After a screening on the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996, it vanished.

In the a long time since, Nolan, 53, has develop into recognized for his expansive cinematography and mind-bending plots in motion pictures like “Memento,” the “Dark Knight” trilogy and “Dunkirk.” He is predicted to win his first Oscar on Sunday for “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic a couple of theoretical physicist that made practically a billion {dollars}.

The reputation of Nolan’s work has made the elusiveness of “Larceny” maddening for followers who wish to watch his total filmography, and maybe acquire perception into his early improvement as a filmmaker.

“When I meet God, I won’t ask about the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, I’ll shake him down for this lost film,” Dan DeLaPorte wrote on Letterboxd, a web site the place individuals price and overview motion pictures.

DeLaPorte mentioned in an interview that he had scrolled by pages and pages of Google search outcomes and combed by Reddit, Vimeo and underground media websites to attempt to discover “Larceny.”

Nolan’s determination to maintain “Larceny” personal whereas publicizing “Doodlebug,” a three-minute brief from 1997, has fueled hypothesis amongst his followers. Is he planning to remodel “Larceny” right into a full-length function? Embarrassed by his work as a younger filmmaker? Nervous about a few of its content material?

“In English literature there’s this term, ‘juvenilia,’ which is great artists’ younger works when they were teenagers or apprentices,” mentioned Matthew Tempest, who was secretary of the college’s movie society when Nolan was its president. “Frustrating as it might be for fans, I think they have a right to destroy or withdraw it.”

In 2021, a fan tracked down a replica of one other of Nolan’s early brief movies, “Tarantella” (1990), with the assistance of a Chicago public tv station. After the movie was posted on Vimeo, Nolan’s manufacturing firm filed a copyright infringement claim to have it eliminated. Even so, the invention renewed hope amongst Nolan followers.

Could “Larceny” be unearthed subsequent?

A Training Exercise

In the Nineteen Nineties, the movie society at University College London met weekly in a cluttered theater basement the place strips of movie hung from the ceiling. Nolan and the group’s different members, together with Emma Thomas, his future spouse, had entry to cameras, tripods, dolly tracks and different filmmaking instruments. He continued to make use of the tools after graduating in 1993.

While most college students wore denims, sweaters and denim jackets, Nolan dressed meticulously in button-down shirts and swimsuit jackets. He was additionally devoted to the granular particulars of filmmaking. Tempest recalled seeing Nolan attempt to create a distortion impact with a glass bowl.

“He was really interested in the physical mechanics of cameras and lights and equipment,” Tempest mentioned.

The movie society, Tempest mentioned, would display motion pictures like Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” within the theater upstairs to assist fund its members’ filmmaking.

Student movies present alternatives for budding filmmakers to experiment with their craft and forge partnerships with actors and crew members, mentioned Christopher Chan Roberson, who teaches cinematography on the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

“The idea of making a student film is a notion of process,” Roberson mentioned. “It’s just a process of going, ‘OK, maybe I didn’t make the best film, but I really love working with this cinematographer and this is my cinematographer for life.’”

Jeremy Theobald, who performed the occupant of the condo in “Larceny,” additionally starred in Nolan’s debut function, “Following,” about an aspiring author who meets knowledgeable burglar. David Julyan, who created the music for “Larceny,” later labored with Nolan on “Memento,” “Insomnia” and “The Prestige.”

Theobald instructed Darren Mooney, the writer of “Christopher Nolan: A Critical Study of the Films,” that Nolan’s script for “Larceny” differed from the surreal movie society scripts he had learn.

“This was witty,” Theobald mentioned. “It was funny, it was pithy and it was dark. It had a great twist at the end.”

The plot entails an encounter throughout which a burglar is disturbed by the house owner, Julyan mentioned. In an interview with Empire journal, Theobald mentioned his character was arguing with one other a couple of lady when “a third man bursts out of the cupboard.”

This story might have been impressed by Nolan’s private life. He had just lately returned dwelling from work to seek out his condo door kicked in and his place a multitude, based on Ian Nathan’s ebook “Christopher Nolan: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work.”

“Larceny” was shot over one weekend at Nolan’s condo, Julyan mentioned, and options percussion loops, electrical piano and bass guitar from a synthesizer Julyan had borrowed.

In an interview with Vice revealed in 2014, Nolan recalled treating “Larceny” and “Doodlebug” as alternatives to experiment with filmmaking strategies earlier than making use of these abilities to “Following.”

“Can you create a very stripped-down, very tight production machine that would then be applied to making a feature film?” Nolan mentioned. He added, “When we came to do ‘Following,’ we were sort of shooting a short film every weekend. So it would be a two-minute, three-minute chunk of the film done every weekend.”

‘A Very Controlled Artist’

“Tarantella” lives on within the recesses of the web, and “Doodlebug” is included on the Criterion version of “Following.” But only a few individuals have seen “Larceny,” and that appears unlikely to alter.

Directors typically keep away from releasing their early work out of concern that it might replicate poorly on them, Roberson mentioned.

“I think Chris Nolan doesn’t want to make himself vulnerable,” Roberson mentioned, including, “Why share incomplete stuff you’re not proud of, versus ‘Oppenheimer’?”

In Mooney’s ebook, Theobald mentioned: “I think Chris thought it was too similar to ‘Following,’ that people would think that it was a test bed for ‘Following.’”

A spokeswoman for Nolan declined to remark.

Robert Coren, a former archivist for the University College London movie society, mentioned he was not conscious of any copies of “Larceny” in its archives. And a former director of the Cambridge Film Festival mentioned no copies had been within the pageant archives. Julyan mentioned he had a VHS tape of the movie however wouldn’t share it.

Other individuals who labored on “Larceny” had been circumspect concerning the movie.

“As it’s not publicly available I’m not going to divulge what it’s about,” Ivan Cornell, who has a producing credit score on “Larceny,” wrote in an e-mail. Theobald instructed The New York Times that as a result of Nolan by no means launched “Larceny” after the movie pageant, “I am unable to talk about its content.” The different actors within the brief, Dave Savva and Mark Deighton, couldn’t be reached.

“Chris is a very controlled artist, a controlled filmmaker,” mentioned Nigel Karikari, the assistant director of “Larceny,” recalling how Nolan would use a camcorder to take rehearsal photographs earlier than filming. “Him not wanting to release that is just another extension of that.”

For DeLaPorte, the Letterboxd person, there’s a silver lining to the mysterious, unwatchable nature of “Larceny.”

“There’s lore with it now,” he mentioned. “It’s almost bigger than it would have been if it was available. There’s this unattainable thing that just keeps the hunt going.”