Tucked away on Rue d’Arenberg, just a few steps from the tourist crowds of the Grand Place, Cinema Nova doesn’t announce itself the way you’d expect a cinema to. There’s no marquee lighting up the street, no glossy poster wall. Instead you get a joyful bric-a-brac of salvaged colour above the entrance, hand-painted letters, a wall of scavenged faces, and a red glow spilling out onto the cobblestones. I’d walked past it plenty of times before finally stepping inside, and once I did, I understood why people talk about this place the way they do.
A Cinema With a Past
Nova opened in January 1997, but the building itself goes back much further. Originally built at the end of the 19th century as a cabaret bar, it later became a vaudeville theatre, then a cinema called the Arenberg Studio in the 1930s. It closed in 1987 and spent a decade as a second-hand furniture store before reopening as Nova. Today it’s run entirely as a non-profit by the cooperative Supernova Coop, with a team of around a hundred volunteers keeping the programme alive.
That volunteer-run, horizontal structure is really the soul of the place. There’s no corporate booking calendar here. Nova exists to platform rare, contemporary, and often previously unreleased films in Belgium, along with festivals, discussions, exhibitions, and concerts that spill out of the screening room into the basement foyer.
Stepping Inside
The auditorium itself seats 200 and has been deliberately stripped back to raw brick. There’s nothing polished about it, and that’s clearly the point. It gives the whole space a kind of underground, almost squat-like energy that you don’t find in the multiplexes a ten-minute walk away. Sitting there before a screening, waiting in the dim light, it feels less like going to the cinema and more like being let in on something.
Downstairs, the bar and lounge area keeps the same DIY spirit but with a lot more colour. Murals cover the walls, mismatched furniture fills the corners, and it’s clearly a space built by people who wanted somewhere to hang around after the film, not just somewhere to sell tickets.
The Art Is Part of the Experience
What struck me most walking around Nova is how much of it feels handmade. Sculptures built from scrap metal and found objects sit lit up in corners. A whole wall is covered in salvaged masks and puppet-like faces, each one clearly made by hand, clearly loved.
None of it feels curated in the gallery sense. It feels accumulated, added to over years by people who cared about the space, which fits perfectly with a cinema that’s been kept alive by volunteers rather than investors.
Final Thoughts
Cinema Nova isn’t trying to be the most comfortable place to watch a film in Brussels, and it isn’t trying to compete with the big chains. What it offers instead is something increasingly rare: a genuinely independent, community-run space where the programming, the decor, and the whole atmosphere reflect the people who built it rather than a marketing department. If you’re after arthouse films, rare screenings, or just want to see a different side of Brussels nightlife, Nova is well worth the visit.
Address: Cinema Nova, Rue d’Arenberg 3, 1000 Brussels
Website: nova-cinema.org
