[custom_adv] With the widespread closures of cinemas as part of measures to stem the spread of Covid-19, drive-in movie theatres around the world, where social distancing is guaranteed, have been enjoying new-found popularity. People sit in their tractors watching a movie in a drive-in cinema at the Milad Tower parking space, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease. [custom_adv] The new coronavirus pandemic has brought back something unseen in Iran since its Revolution: a drive-in movie theater. [custom_adv] Once decried by revolutionaries for allowing too much privacy for unmarried young couples, a drive-in theater now operates from a parking lot right under iconic Milad tower, showing a film in line with the views of hard-liners. [custom_adv] Workers spray disinfectants on cars that line up each night here after buying tickets online for what is called the “Cinema Machine" in Farsi. They tune into the film's audio via an FM station on their car radios. [custom_adv] With stadiums shut and movie theaters closed, this parking-lot screening is the only film being shown in a communal setting amid the virus outbreak in Iran, one of the world's worst. [custom_adv] it has reported more than 98,600 cases with over 6,200 deaths, though international and local experts acknowledge Iran's toll is likely far higher. [custom_adv] The film being shown, however, is “Exodus," produced by a firm affiliated with hard-line Revolutionary Guard. [custom_adv] The film by director Ebrahim Hatamikia focuses on cotton farmers whose fields die from salt water brought by local dams. [custom_adv] The farmers, led by an actor who appears to be the Republic's answer to American cowboy stand-in Sam Elliott, drive their tractors to Tehran to protest the government. [custom_adv] ithad built dams across the country since the revolution — especially under hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — that environmentalists blame for damaging waterways and farmland. [custom_adv] But this film instead involves “a peasant protest against the local authority that symbolically resembles President Rouhani’s government," the state-owned Tehran Times said. [custom_adv] But this film instead involves “a peasant protest against the local authority that symbolically resembles President Rouhani’s government," the state-owned Tehran Times said.