100-year-old cinema to close in Berlin

Kino Cinema in Berlin has announced that the theatre will close after operating in the Friedenau district for over 100 years. Locals are sad to see it go.

Berlin Kino Cinema to close after 100 years

The imaginatively-named Kino Cinema in Berlin Friedenau is to close after more than 100 years of showing films. October 29 saw cinema staff screen a movie for the final time, the 2025 German comedy Das Kanu des Manitu.

“I came here as a child,” Jochen Scholz told local public broadcaster rbb while queuing for Das Kanu, “every Sunday for the children’s showing”. “I was first here in 1965,” said another moviegoer, Jürgen Reiche. “Less in recent years because we have moved house, but I find it very sad.”

Recognisable from its simple, turquoise facade and neon green sign, Kino Cinema originally opened as the silent film theatre Corso in 1911.  The cinema’s one theatre had only 16 rows, from which moviegoers could feel the U9 U-Bahn line between Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz and Walter-Schreiber-Platz rumbling beneath.

“Films don’t last as long these days,” says Cineplex

Berliner Cineplex-Kinos, a chain that has run the small neighbourhood cinema since 1997, said that the theatre had always been a “piece of Berlin cinema culture which we maintained with much passion”. 

Speaking to local newspaper B.Z., the Kino Cinema owners said that the hype and following of new flicks “don’t last as long these days” and cited the small cinema's lack of profitability as the reason for closure. 

Vouchers for Kino Cinema can now be used at the Titania and Adria Filmpalast Cineplex locations in Berlin Steglitz.