Finnish admissions 2020 drop 54%, local films grab 41.1% market share

2020 kick started very strongly, according to figures from the Finnish Film Foundation. Disney’s Frozen 2, released at Christmas 2019, continued to perform strongly in 2020 and end up at number 1 , with 277,578 admissions, while the January opener Ladies of Steel by Finnish director Pamela Tola, finished second with 246,714 admissions.

Three other local films performed strongly before the cinemas’ forced closures mid-March: Lenka Hellstedt’s children’s film Hayflower, Quiltshoe and the Feisty First-Grader (179,830 admissions), Taneli Mustonen’s comedy The Renovation (178,043), and Antti Jokinen’s biopic Helene (177,678).

Cinemas re-opened progressively in June but with less than half the screens capacity due to restrictions, that even toughened up in December. A lack of new releases - especially from the US - resulted in a 54% plunge in admissions year on year, from 8.41 million in 2019 to 3.9 million in 2020.

As in most European countries, Finnish films were able to fill the gap on the market and even posted stronger results than in 2019 (1.6 million in 2020 against 1.4 million the previous year) for a 41.1% market share, an all-time high in cinema statistics history.

A record six Finnish films were in the Top 10, including four directed by women - Ladies of Steel, Hayflower, Quiltshoe and the Feisty First-Grader, Zaida Bergroth’s celebrated biopic Tove, and Maria Sid’s franchise family film Ricky Rapper and the Wrong Vincent. In total, films directed by women accounted for 57% of all Finnish film premieres in 2020.

Tove was also the most successful Swedish-language Finnish film in 40 years.

Documentaries fared exceptionally well - better than in previous years. Ilmari Arnkil, Head of Distribution at the Finnish Film Foundation underlined the strong performance of two titles released in the fall 2020:

• Joonas Neuvonen and Sadri Cetinkaya’s Lost Boys (independent sequel to the 2010 hit Reindeerspotting) which sold 74,000 tickets, and
• Virpi Suutari’s portrait of the celebrated architect couple Alvar and Aino Aalto in the film Aalto - watched by 45,000 people.

The top three Nordic (non-Finnish) films were:

• Jerry Maya’s Detective Agency-The Mystery of the Train Robber (25,977 admissions)
• Pelle-No Tail (23,505 admissions)
• A Piece of My Heart, Finnish minority co-production (13,628 admissions).
  

To see Finland - January to December 2020 Admissions Charts: CLICK HERE.