TEHRAN -- After a ten-year hiatus, Tehran’s Azadi Cinema reopened on February 6 with a screening of “That Man Came”, director Habibollah Bahmani’s film about an Iranian war veteran.

The Art Bureau, which runs the cinematic complex, and the Tehran Municipality collaborated in the reconstruction of the five-theater complex. The main hall of the cinema has a seating capacity of 600.
“This cinema is a part of Iran’s cinema memory. Thus we took part in the reconstruction project,” Cultural Places Development Office Managing Director Akbar Tashakkornia said earlier this week.
A number of entries to the 26th Fajr International Film Festival, which is currently underway in Tehran, are to be screened at the complex.
The original cinema was destroyed in a fire in 1997 which broke out during a screening of director Fereidun Hassanpur’s “Summer Vacation”.
The cause of the fire was never ascertained but it was rumored at the time that the complex had been set on fire by pressure groups opposed to cinema.