TEHRAN: Iran’s minimalist art-house films may win accolades abroad, but many young Iranians would rather curl up in front of an uncensored Hollywood movie on DVD.

“When I can watch a DVD or video at home, why should I bother going to a cinema to watch censored films?” asked Shahrzad, a student living in an upmarket north Tehran district.

Ticket sales have plummeted by a quarter to 15 million a year in four years as audiences abandon often monotonous films and decrepit theatres for widely available pirated videos of the latest Hollywood films.

“Each Iranian spends an average of less than 40 minutes a year at the cinema,” parliamentarian Ali Asghar Sherdoust was quoted by newspapers as saying.

“The crisis has reached its final stages and Iranian cinema has lost its contact with its domestic audience.”

“The smuggling of foreign films, compact discs, internet and satellite television have harmed the domestic film industry,” said Sherdoust, spokesman for parliament’s cultural commission.

Despite the constraints, Iranian films have won about 300 awards in the past decade at international festivals, where directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf have been praised as innovative artists.

Art theatres still draw an enthusiastic public, with audiences cheering any scenes that have got past the censors.

Despite a revival of art-house cinemas in the past decade, many theatres have been closed nationwide.

“It’s a ‘Catch-22’ situation. Iranian producers want to produce movies with more critical topics, which would draw larger audiences, but such films often fail to get a screening permit,” Mohammad Hossein Farahbakhsh of Iran’s Film Producers Association said.

Lack of transparent laws and market insecurity have discouraged investors from building new cinemas to help the industry to flourish.—Reuters