Christopher Nolan’s rare first short film is now available to watch on YouTube – but it might not stay up for long.
Titled Tarantella, the 1989 short film is co-written and directed by Nolan and then-collaborator Roko Belic.
As per the synopsis by the YouTube uploader The Great Cinema, “it revolves around the suffering of a young man who experiences nightmares about spiders and demons.”
In the dialogue-free four-minute short, a man (played by Belic) sees visions of spiders before bolting upright in his bed. He is then confronted by a pale-faced figure in black lipstick (Nolan, in a rare acting role).
From there, Tarantella breaks down into a series of disturbing images that plague the mind of the man and appear to hasten his descent into madness. You can see it for yourself above.
However, don’t expect Tarantella to stay up for very long. It was thought lost for years before being found again in 2021, but has since again been scrubbed from the internet.
In truth, this feels like it’s in a similar vein to the wave of James Bond auditions (including Henry Cavill’s tape) that leaked earlier this year: an intriguing piece of film history, but one that was never meant to see the light of day.
Still, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the early work of Nolan, a fledgling director who, at the time, would have been a teenager with aspirations to work in the industry.
Nolan would go on to direct two more shorts, Doodlebug and Larceny, the latter of which has never been released.
The director, of course, went on to bigger things. He burst onto the scene with thriller Memento in 2000 before later reaching a worldwide audience with The Dark Knight trilogy.
Ever since, his features have become event films, with Interstellar, Inception, and Best Picture winner Oppenheimer marked out as some of the 21st Century’s greatest films.
Nolan is currently working on The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. It stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Zendaya – among several others.
For more, check out our ranking of the best Christopher Nolan films.