Christopher Nolan’s Lost Horror Movie Has Resurfaced And You Can Watch it Here … For Now
Christopher Nolan is known for crafting cinematic epics, often within the world of science fiction. From Inception to Interstellar, Nolan dabbles in genre to create his deeply affecting stories that have. But did you know that Nolan once made a horror short film titled Tarantella? In fact, according to IMDb, it’s the first film Nolan ever made. The film has been lost for 32 years, but just a few days ago, The Great Cinema uploaded the film to their YouTube channel, finally giving Nolan fans a glimpse into the auteur’s young brain.
At just under five minutes long, the 1989 short film follows a young man experiencing nightmares about big spiders and demons. It’s rather surreal in its editing and cinematography, and serves as a fascinating precursor to one of Nolan’s first feature films, Memento, which was released in 2000. Tarantella feels like a young Nolan working through the lens of filmmakers like David Lynch and the giallo directors of the 1970s.
Watch the short film below:
Nolan co-directed Tarantella with Roko Belic, a frequent collaborator in his early days as a filmmaker. Nolan and Belic are also the film’s cinematographers, producers, and writers, filming the short on 8 mm. Belic also stars in Tarantella with Jonathan Nolan (Christopher Nolan’s brother). The film originally appeared on the PBS show Image Union in 1989.
According to the video caption from The Great Cinema, Tarantella “was considered lost for 32 years until Henry Adams discovered it in July 2021.” He uploaded the film to YouTube, but it was quickly removed when Nolan’s company filed a copyright claim. Hopefully, that won’t be the case this time.
Nolan made Tarantella at just 19 and has since gone on to direct 12 feature films, with two more currently in production, including his adaptation of The Odyssey. He’s also the mind behind the Christian Bale-helmed Batman trilogy, which includes Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two for his work on the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer.
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