A thief has allegedly used a forklift to drive through a cinema's doors and steal an automatic teller machine (ATM).

Lethbridge police responded to an alarm at 5:20am on Monday (Canada time) at the Movie Mill theatre, where they discovered a forklift, stolen from a nearby construction site, had been driven through the cinema's front doors, according to a report in the Calgary Herald.

The thief had used the forklift to pick up the ATM and put it on the back of a truck, police said. Minutes later, a police officer in Coaldale, 10 kilometres east, radioed that he was in pursuit of a pickup truck. The chase ended with a collision between the truck, the police car and a power pole.

Heinrich Martens, 19, of Vauxhall, has been charged with breaking and entering, two counts of theft, fleeing to avoid police, and causing bodily harm.