“Where is the cinema? It is all around you outside, all over the city, that marvelous, continuous performance of films and scenarios.” After its introduction to Iran in 1900, and the commencement of its public screenings in 1903, cinema became closely tied to urban and societal transformations, which marked the ethos of modernity in that country. This paper offers a historiographical survey of Tehran of the early twentieth century as a cosmopolitan city, and will explore the ways in which cinema, as a heterotopic site, contributed to urban hybridity and cosmopolitan imaginations. Furthermore, analyzing newsreels, short and feature films from the first three decades of the twentieth century, this presentation will also attend to how the depiction of urban experiences in films portrayed discontent with and criticisms aimed at the rapid and unfamiliar changes brought on by this "new time." By the early twentieth century, Tehran had become a popular diasporic hub for the Armenian, Azerbaijani, Ottoman, Georgian, Russian, French, American, and British communities, who lived and intermingled in various neighborhoods. To meet the demands of these diverse groups, Tehran was further expanded and compartmentalized. In fact, Tehran soon witnessed the rapid multiplication of public spaces such as hotels, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, and theaters designed for the recreation of Tehrani residents. Movie theaters were built in urban areas that were easily accessible by mechanical forms of transportation such as tramways and streetcars; thus further facilitating the circulation of diverse people, ideologies, ethnicities, and religions. Concentrated in the most prestigious streets and owned/operated by the diasporic communities, movie houses became sites of sociability for audiences who inhabited these urban centers. The cinema screen, on the other hand, as a space of illusion for and of the Other, facilitated the refashioning of modern subjectivity; showcasing different lifestyles, cultures, landscapes, and technological innovations, the international films projected onto Iranian screens offered a cinematic horizon of expectation for multiple alternative futures. Drawing on everyday city experiences in films, cinema itself became a public medium through which criticisms were made against urban changes. Thus, while mediating public sentiments associated with the urban, cinema became engaged in a process of urban cosmopolitanism. In examining the understudied relationship of cinema and the city, this paper intends to draw attention to cosmopolitan Tehran as a fundamental tenet to the discussions on cinema and modernity in Iran, and also to establish film as an analytical tool of urban studies.