CineStar Brand Guidelines: The Lübeck Family Cinemas That Became Germany’s Multiplex Chain

A Lübeck family cinema business.

CineStar grew out of a family cinema business in Lübeck, in northern Germany. German Wikipedia says the group was founded as a private company by Hilma and Albert Kieft and run under the name Kieft & Kieft Filmtheater; its home cinema until 2004 was the Lichtspiele Hoffnung in Lübeck, which opened in 1948. Two of the founders’ children, Marlis and Heiner Kieft, joined in 1975 and 1979 and steadily enlarged the business, the encyclopedia says. Its rise began after German reunification, when the family took over a large number of cinemas in the former East Germany.

The CineStar name arrived with the multiplex era. In 1993, German Wikipedia says, the Kiefts turned Lübeck’s Stadthalle, long the main venue of the Nordic Film Days Lübeck festival, into a multiplex called CineStar – Der Filmpalast, “the film palace.” The next CineStar Filmpalast opened in Wismar in 1995, and further multiplexes followed before 2000 in cities such as Erlangen, Augsburg, Ingolstadt and Frankfurt am Main. German Wikipedia records that in 1997 the group received the International Exhibitor of the Year award from the US National Association of Theatre Owners at ShoWest in Las Vegas.

In 1998 the Australian exhibitor Greater Union, through its parent Amalgamated Holdings Limited (AHL), took a 50 per cent stake in Kieft & Kieft Filmtheater as a joint venture, German Wikipedia says. Openings in the following years included the CineStar Original in Berlin’s Sony Center in 2000, which specialised in English-language films and housed an IMAX 3D cinema, and a CineStar in Leipzig in 2001 that became a venue for festivals including DOK Leipzig.

The Ufa takeover and an Australian owner.

The family’s largest move came in 2003. Der Spiegel reported on 17 February 2003 that the Lübeck CineStar owner Kieft & Kieft, together with the Fürth cinema-advertising firm RoWo, would take over 32 of the 37 Ufa cinemas through a joint rescue company, after the Ufa-Theater operating company had applied for insolvency proceedings in October 2002. From 1 April, the magazine wrote, the group would have 96 cinema sites and would become by a wide margin the number one in Germany.

The Ufa deal stretched the family business, German Wikipedia says, and AHL then bought out the Kieft siblings, taking full ownership of Kieft & Kieft Filmtheater; the company traded as Greater Union Filmpalast GmbH. The encyclopedia dates that buyout to 2004, while the owner’s own history, now published by EVT, says it acquired full ownership of Cinestar in 2003. Some Ufa cinemas went back to the insolvency administrator, and on 1 January 2005 the diamond-shaped Ufa brand returned to its owner, the RTL Group; the remaining cinemas were renamed CineStar, German Wikipedia says.

The Australian parent has changed its own name twice. German Wikipedia says AHL became Event Hospitality & Entertainment in December 2015, and EVT says that in 2022 “EVENT became EVT.” In October 2018, City A.M. reported, Vue agreed to buy EVT’s German cinema division, then 57 multiplex sites with 449 screens, in what the paper called Vue’s largest acquisition to date. Germany’s competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, cleared the merger in March 2020 on condition that five CineStar cinemas and one CinemaxX be sold, German Wikipedia says, and by the end of 2020 EVT had called off the merger plans. CineStar has stayed with EVT, which lists the German chain in its own history.

How cinema chains present themselves.

This group of guides looks at cinema chains in France, Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, Finland, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Australia, and at how each presents itself: the name over the entrance, the signs, logos and colour schemes the companies publish, and the way that name carries over to tickets, websites and apps. The palettes shown here are our own interpretations, not official colour values.

Formats are part of that presentation. Some operators label their auditoriums with the premium and large-format systems they install, such as IMAX, 4DX, ScreenX or Dolby Atmos sound, and with their own names for reclining seats or VIP rooms, as Cinema City’s national websites do. City-centre multiplexes carry house labels too: UGC has grouped its large multiplexes under the Ciné Cité name since 1995.

Ownership varies. Some chains belong to larger cinema groups, as Cinema City has belonged to Cineworld since 2014; others sit inside film and media companies, as with UGC, which also produces and distributes films and series and in which Canal+ says it took a 34% stake in November 2025. Restructurings and sales are part of the record, and corporate pages on founders and owners are where each company tells its own version.

Loyalty cards and subscription passes have become part of the brand as well. UGC launched its UGC Illimité card in France in 2000, and other operators followed with passes and clubs under their own names. This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain: who founded it, who owns it now and how it names its cinemas and cards, and it marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Premium seats and large screens.

Under EVT the German cinemas have taken on the group’s premium formats. EVT says that in 2022 its three-seat cinema concept was installed at six German sites, among them CineStar Metropolis in Frankfurt and Berlin’s Cubix on Alexanderplatz. In November 2023 Deadline reported a deal between IMAX and EVT for five IMAX with Laser systems, one at an Event Cinemas site in Sydney and four at CineStar locations in Germany, which it called the single biggest deal for IMAX systems in Germany. German Wikipedia says Dortmund’s largest auditorium was converted to IMAX in October 2024, the Metropolis in Frankfurt opened an IMAX screen that December, and Leipzig followed in August 2025. CineStar’s website, read in November 2026, lists 43 cinemas from Augsburg to Wismar and marks six of them with IMAX.

The map has also shrunk in places. The CineStar Original and the IMAX cinema in Berlin’s Sony Center closed on 1 January 2020, German Wikipedia says, and the Bielefeld cinema closed in March 2020 after twenty years. t-online reported on 14 January 2026 that the CineStar at Berlin’s Treptower Park, opened on 11 November 1999, would close for good on 31 January 2026, with the building due for a new use. The company is run from Lübeck as CMS Cinema Management Services GmbH & Co. KG, according to its website, and its Lübeck cinema still sits in the Stadthalle where the CineStar name began.

For a design guide, CineStar shows how a family cinema name from Lübeck could outlast a change of owner and take in another chain’s sites. Compare Event Cinemas, EVT’s chain in Australia, and Vue, which agreed to buy CineStar in 2018. For this guide we use a night navy, a warm gold and a soft ivory with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep CineStar’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.