Despite an upswing in cinema attendance, local films lost 25.9% of their audience compared to 2018.

General admissions in Finland passed 8.41 million in 2019, up 3.8% year on year, and B.O. earnings climbed by 6.2% to €95,940,919, second best result in a decade after the record 2017 -year of The Unknown Soldier, watched by nearly one million Finns.

According to preliminary figures from the Finnish Film Foundation, Hollywood fare were the biggest audience-pullers, such as the top four best-sellers Joker (402,892 admissions), Avengers: Endgame (342,893 admissions), The Lion King (333,239) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (293,889).

Finnish films however failed to surf on the attendance upswing and captured only 16.8% of the market with 1,415,389 tickets sold, the lowest share since 2009 (15%).

Admissions dropped 25.9% from 2018, and B.O. returns by 27.4% to €14,863,283.

The most successful Finnish film of the year was the family franchise Ricky Rapper & the Strongman - fourth biggest film of 2019 - with 288,305 admissions.

Two biopics about national music legends scored with local audiences: King of Hearts by Aleksi Mäkelä, about country singer Kari Tapio (173,851 admissions), and Teppo Airaksinen’s The Ragged Life of Juice Leskinen about the father figure of Finnish rock lyrics (114,172 admissions).

Solar Films delivered five of the top ten Finnish films of the year: Ricky Rapper & the Strongman, King of Hearts, Perfect Christmas (via its sub-division Bronson Club), Man and a Junior, and Lessons of Love.

MRP Matila Röhr Productions co-produced the documentary Ailo: A Lapland Odyssey, seventh biggest local title of 2019, as well as Nature Symphony directed by Marko Röhr, watched by 28,576 filmgoers.

The five most success Nordic - non Finnish-films were: 

  • Bamse and the Thunderbell (SE), 31,202 admissions released 30.05.19 by Nordisk Film 
  • Sune vs Sune (SE) 9,489 admissions, released 22.02.19 by Atlantic Film 
  • A Piece of My Heart (SE) 6,734 admissions, released 27.12.19 by Nordisk Film 
  • And Then We Danced (SE), 6,546, released 18.10.19 by Cinema Mondo 
  • The House that Jack Built (DK) 6,008 admissions, released 08.03.2019 by Nordisk Film

Commenting on the 2019 theatrical market, Lasse Saarinen, CEO at the Finnish Film Foundation stressed the overall healthy theatrical market and sustained investments in the sector from cinema owners. Regarding domestic films, he said: “Although our market share dropped from last year, it was still on an acceptable level at nearly 17 %. Our average market share of the last decade is 25.4% which is really good,” he noted.

Looking ahead, Saarinen predicted an increase both in overall attendance and in domestic admissions. So far so good as more than one million Finns went to the movies in January and two Finnish films have already passed 100,000 admissions each: Pamela Tola’s comedy Ladies of Steel (180,977) and Antti Jokinen’s biopic Helene (103,546). 

To see Finland's 2019 - January to December Admissions Charts: CLICK HERE.