Cinema co-owner Barry Byron said it was "frustrating" not having an opening date for cinemas.

"Cinemas weren't even mentioned anywhere and that was the frustrating part ... it felt like we were being left out of the picture," Mr Byron said

"Cinemas are a big industry for little towns, especially like Ararat. It was stressful not knowing when we could open, and we couldn't plan anything.

"We were one of the first to close and we always thought we would be one of the last ones to open, but we didn't think the second wave would last longer than the first."

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Mr Byron said they lost a lot of stock during the COVID-19 closure.

"When we reopened for six weeks at the end of June, I had ordered all of this stock in because no one thought we were going to be shut down again," he said.

"We tried to get rid of as much as we could, like icecreams and stuff that didn't have long dates on them.

"We opened for two hours on Fridays and Saturdays to get rid of it, but we lost a lot of stock."

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After months of closure, Victorian cinema operators were given the go-ahead to reopen at midnight Sunday November 8, with up to 20 people per space.

Mr Byron said release dates for blockbuster movies had been pushed back to 2021, due to the COVID-19 restrictions,

"It was bad enough putting up with the pandemic and COVID-19 restrictions, but we also had another problem ... major film distributors put back their release dates of all their mainstream movies," he said.

"There are not many movies from the major companies released. This works well for the independent distributors.

"A lot their product is squeezed out of the market place by the mainstream movies. So they will get good exposure, and there are some good independent movies out at the moment.

"It makes it better for them because they can get a spot on the screen, where before Christmas time everyone put the major release movies on.

"It will be good and everyone is quite excited. We have to have half an hour between starting times and we can't have two movies finish at the same time."

Ararat Astor Cinema will be showing Trolls World Tour, Tenet, Bill and Ted Face the Music, The Honest Thief, After We Collided, Rams and Never Too Late.

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