The Film Christopher Nolan Doesn’t Want You to Watch

Before Christopher Nolan became a celebrated director — before “Inception” penetrated the land of dreams, “Interstellar” played with the laws of physics and “Tenet” warped all sense of chronology — there was “Larceny.”

In 1995, Nolan directed “Larceny” with a group of friends he had met through the film society at University College London. It is about eight minutes long, was shot in black and white with 16-millimeter cameras and involves an apartment burglary.

That is essentially all the public information about the film. After a screening at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996, it vanished.

In the decades since, Nolan, 53, has become known for his expansive cinematography and mind-bending plots in movies like “Memento,” the “Dark Knight” trilogy and “Dunkirk.” He is expected to win his first Oscar on Sunday for “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic about a theoretical physicist that made nearly a billion dollars.

The popularity of Nolan’s work has made the elusiveness of “Larceny” maddening for fans who want to watch his entire filmography, and perhaps gain insight into his early development 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 website where people rate and review movies.