18/03/2010 - Swedish admissions hit the roof in 2009, with 5.6 million, the first time in the 2000s that domestic films passed the five million mark. Even without the three Millennium films, local films attracted over 20% of country’s moviegoers.

Thanks to the Millennium phenomenon, Swedish films had a record 32.7% market share in 2009, the best ever registered since the Swedish Film Institute started its statistical count on cinema attendance in 1966/67.

Swedish admissions hit the roof in 2009 with 5.6 million admissions, the first time in the 2000s that Swedish films passed five million. Even without the three Millennium films, national films attracted over 20% of the Swedish audience. General admissions as well increased year on year by 13.4% to 17.3 million. US films slid from a 68.3% market share in 2008 to 53.9%. After Sweden in second position, the UK had the best market share (7.3%) followed by Australia (2.2%) and France (1.4%).

2009 was the Nordisk Film year thanks to the three Millennium films The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (1.2m admissions), The Girl who Played with Fire (one million admissions) and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (508,749 admissions) that ranked first, second and sixth respectively at the national Top Ten. Nordisk also released the Swedish summer hit Sommaren med Göran that sold 550,085 tickets for a fifth place and the US Twilight 2, number six. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was number three with 754,497 tickets sold for Warner/Sandrew Metronome. A total of 12 Swedish films sold over 100,000 tickets each in 2009 against eight in 2008 which shows that a wide variety of Swedish titles hit their target cinema audience. Even the documentary genre had notable successes, such as The Queen and I, the biggest Swedish documentary film in the last 30 years.

2010 looks promising for Swedish films, even without the Millennium blockbusters. The thriller Easy Money (Snabba Cash) by Daniel Esposito has sold over 560,000 tickets so far for Nordisk Film and continues to hold strongly at the box office after seven weeks, and Josef Fares’ comedy Balls (Farsan) was still number one at the Top ten Sweden last weekend after three weeks (246,893 admissions for SF).