Kabul, Afghanistan – The Taliban authorities have demolished Ariana Cinema, one of Afghanistan’s oldest cinemas, in the capital Kabul, according to reports from readers of KabulNow.
Sources said the Taliban-run municipality in Kabul has begun tearing down historic cinema building, with plans to construct a commercial market on the site. Videos circulating on social media show heavy machinery destroying the structure, while debris removal has been ongoing for the past two days.
A local source told KabulNow on Wednesday (December 17) that the demolition work started earlier this week and is still in progress.
Ariana Cinema, which dated back several decades, was considered one of the country’s oldest cinema-theatre halls after Behzad Cinema. The building sustained repeated damage during Afghanistan’s years of conflict and was shut down during the Taliban’s first period in power in the late 1990s.
Following their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban initially held a film festival at Ariana Cinema, before later closing it entirely. The decision to demolish the building marks the latest step in what critics describe as the systematic erasure of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.
The Taliban had previously demolished Khair Khana Cinema, another historic cinema in Kabul, announcing plans to replace it with a mosque, commercial facilities and residential buildings. The group has imposed a ban on the public display of images and of livings beings, a restriction that has effectively ended cinema and film production in the country.
Afghanistan currently has no functioning film industry.
Ariana Cinema is the third historic cinema to be destroyed in recent years. In 2020, Park Cinema was demolished on the orders of former Vice President Amrullah Saleh. That decision sparked widespread public backlash, with many Afghans describing the demolition as the destruction of a shared cultural memory.
