
“You used to be able to smoke inside,” Omar Edressi recalls about Cinema Rif, the 86-year-old movie theatre that still stands on Tangier’s Grand Socco. “The first thing that welcomed you when you entered the building was a thick cloud of vapour.”
Tickets to the cinema were a lot cheaper in the 1970s when Edressi, a local cinema lover, would visit – it cost just one dirham ($0.10) for entrance, a sandwich and a soda. Today, a ticket will set you back by roughly 50 dirham ($5) and a soda about 15 ($1.50).