WRITTEN BY: Annika Pham
After an uneven 2022 where admissions were up 70% from 2021, but still 32% down pre-pandemic levels, 2023 kickstarted strongly, with January almost 7 times the 2022 numbers.
The cinema market in Finland is definitely on a mending path after Covid.
In 2022 the market jumped 70.2% year on year in admission terms to 5.8 million, and 82.8% in gross B.O. to €18.73 million, although ticket sales were 32% down the 2015-2019 annual average, according to preliminary figures from the the Finnish Film Foundation.
2022 was marked by an all-time record number of domestic releases (60), that most probably led to a cannibalisation, and only three Finnish films gathered more than 100,000 admissions: Mika Kaurismäki’s The Grump: In Search of an Escort, top selling Finnish film and third biggest film of 2022 with 192,689 admissions, followed by Joona Tena’s Super Furball Saves the Future (126,20) and Klaus Härö’s English-language debut My Sailor My Love (110,137).
Local films in 2022 posted 1.56 million admissions, a spectacular 81.5% jump from 2021 and their market share at 26.9% was significantly higher than in 2019 (16.9%). Meanwhile US films - led by Top Gun: Maverick, secured 53.7% of the market.
The top selling non-Nordic films in 2022 were all Swedish, with Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (19,637 admissions) ranking between the animated kid franchises Bamse and the Volcano Island (51,625) and Mamma Moo Finds her Way Home (17,770).
The most successful local documentaries were JVG-elokuva: Vuodet ollu tuulisii about rap duo JVG by Miika Särmäkarin & Taito Kawatan (51,625), and Tale of the Sleeping Giants by Marko Röhr (19,018).
January 2023 was set under the reign of James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water that crossed the 300,000 admission mark, and Dreamworks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish that sold nearly 100,000 tickets that month.
But no less than five Finnish films also ranked among the 10 biggest films of January: Juha Wuolijoki’s Lapland Odyssey 4, Retta Huhtanen’s family film The Hullabaloos!, Markku Pölönen’s Hamsters, Jalmari Helander’s Immortal and Taavi Vartia’s children’s film Finders 2 – Pharaohs Ring.
The actioner Immortal actually opened late January with stronger ticket sales (27,594) than any Finnish film that premiered in 2022.
Finnish films ended up in January with a record 38% slice of the market from 277,646 admissions, up 5% the five-year average pre- pandemic, according to the Finnish Film Foundation. Overall admissions that month reached 730,045 which is nearly seven times the 2022 results (110,552).
FOR FINNISH ANNUAL ADMISSIONS CHARTS 2022 - CLICK HERE.
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