Standing in his dimly lit projection room, Ali al-Nur longs for the days when Sudanese filmgoers filled the rows of plush red seats below, enthralled by Hollywood blockbusters, Egyptian comedies and Bollywood extravaganzas.
The Palace of Youth and Children, where the 55-year-old Nur works, is one of just three functioning cinemas left in a city of 4.6 million people. These days, few visit the squat, concrete hall whose outside is plastered with sun-faded posters for the years-old Indian action films it screens.
Khartoum's upmarket Afra Mall has a screen and the Palace is a rare survivor of the heyday of the Sudanese capital's cinemas, but many stand empty after closing their doors because of the economic hardship and government policies that followed the 1989 Islamist-backed coup in this sub-Saharan African country that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power.
Nur started working in the cinemas as a teenager in his hometown of El Obeid, before venturing north to study film engineering in Egypt's capital, Cairo. After arriving in Khartoum in 1983, he worked in three other cinemas. At the time Khartoum had some 15 theatres, all of which were packed with people on the weekends.
"In the past, people used to call to reserve tickets and in the week there was a programme with English-language films on Sunday [and] Arabic [movies] on Tuesday," Nur says amid the whirr of his projection room.
Today, the Palace fills a handful of seats and many of its customers are young couples seeking somewhere private to talk rather than the delights of the silver screen. "Cinema's in a bad state now. There's no cinema really," Nur says.
Sudan's economy suffered badly after 1989, particularly when the US imposed a trade embargo in 1997 over allegations that included rights abuses, and cinemas struggled to afford foreign releases, prompting many to buy cheaper Indian films.