Just in the heart of the Sinai desert sits the abandoned cinema waiting for an audience that never came.
Award-winning Estonian photographer, Kaupo Kikksas visited the desolate area and brought back pictures of a dream that never came through.
Kaupo told the story of the failed project. He shared that the open cinema was built by a French man, Dynn Eadel who was hanging out with his friends in the desert one day and decided that one thing was missing ‘a cinema’.
According to Kaupo, Dynn with that idea in his head returned to Paris and began working on the idea with investors.
He had a special screen designed and bought all the beautiful wooden seats, additional furnishings, and projector equipment off an old movie theatre in Cairo.
Soon enough, the cinema was ready and a grand party was planned for its opening.
However, the locals didn’t like the idea of a cinema sitting in the middle of a desert.
On the night of the grand opening with the Sinai governor in attendance, the electric generator was mysteriously sabotaged.
No movie was screened that night, or any other night, ever till date. The Frenchman’s desert movie dreams went into the drain just like that.
The cinema has been abandoned in the desert ever since, like a monument of the Pharaohs from another dimension.
Strangely, there is no much information about this abandoned cinema on the internet apart from what was shared by Kaupo.
People have wondered how the place has been kept a secret for years and why.
Here is the original flyer for the Frenchman’s cinema which was called “La Tête dans Les Etoies”, (head in the stars).
Would you have loved to see a movie in the middle of a desert if that cinema had been a successful project?
