Compared to 2021, all figures were on the upswing as cinema restrictions were lifted, and film suppliers could finally release their titles that had been bottlenecked due to the pandemic.

Total box office grosses at SEK 1. 39 billion were up 57.4% and admissions at 10.4 million also up more than 57% year on year. Swedish films also saw a 61.6% increase from 2021 with total admissions surging at nearly 2 million.

That said, as noted by Torkel Stål, analyst at the Swedish Film Institute, attendance was still 35% below pre-pandemic times. “Like in most countries, the theatrical market still hasn’t recovered fully post-pandemic,” he said, underlining that all films are faring equally, “regardless of genre or origin”.

The top 10, 2022 was fully dominated by US titles, led by Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water which came second despite its mid-December release.

The biggest selling Swedish film I am Zlatan distributed by Nordisk Film grossed SEK 31.7 million from 233,057 admissions, just beyond - revenue-wise - the last entry in the top 10 all films: Disney’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (SEK23.7 million).

According to the Swedish cinema association Svenska Biografägareförbundet, tickets sold for a Swedish film have been halved since 2014, where you had as many as six titles selling more than 200,000 tickets each, with one blockbuster -The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared-passing 1 million admissions.

See our separate story Nordic Admissions 2014 Part 2: Denmark-Iceland-Sweden: CLICK HERE.

Today, even the star-studded Palme d’or winning film and triple Oscar-nominated Triangle of Sadness by Ruben Öslund, doesn’t draw massive cinema crowds, and in 2022, the film ranked only 5^th among the top 10 Swedish films, after the Zlatan Ibrahimovic biopic I am Zlatan, Felix Herngren’s comedy Long Live the Bonus Family -feature spin off of his hit series - the family franchise Jerry Maya’s Detective Agency-The Riddle of the Scorpion and the animated Bamse and the Volcano Island.

Pondering on the under-performance of Swedish films on screens, Mikael Fellenius, MD at Film i Väst told nordicfilmandtvnews.com:

“My personal reflection is that we have for a long time presented feature films that appeal to a very exclusive art house audience. There has been enormous success in film festivals all over the world and the Swedish film brand has been strengthened. However, too few Swedish films have not been able to engage and reach a sufficiently large target group. Why a Palme d´Or winner doesn’t attract more than approximately 160,000 (as of January 24, 2023) since its theatrical release in Sweden is indeed surprising and worth thinking about,” he said.

“Triangle of Sadness is a broad and very entertaining movie with creative and artistic innovation at the highest possible level, and should have a larger audience this far. But, the audience has lost its confidence in Swedish film and on top of that, people in Sweden really like to use streaming at home as their consumption window,” Fellenius observed.

Stål also underlines that “the trend with films being released directly on streaming services continued in 2022”, while the number of theatrical releases were sustained.

19.3% market share
Another positive factor for the SFI data analyst, is that the overall market share for Swedish films at 19.3% in 2022 was “the highest since 2015, excluding 2020 which was very much affected by the pandemic.”

“Like all films, Swedish films are struggling in a smaller theatrical market. But the figures also show a positive trend for Swedish films,” Stål continues. “The admissions are spread among quite many titles in different genres, which indicates that different audience segments have been reached. It is also positive for the Swedish industry at large that not all admissions are concentrated on a single title.

In addition to the theatrical releases, Swedish film continued to reach large audiences on streaming platforms, with titles like Black Crab on Netflix, Day by Day on C More and Hilma and R.S.V.P. on Viaplay,” he observed.

In other genres, Swedish documentaries that gathered the biggest numbers were:

• Joyce Carol Oates A Body in the Service of Mind by Stig Björkman (9,018 admissions, Folkets Bio),
• Det ska vara got tatt leva, en film om Galenskaparna After Shave by Anna Hammarén, Håkan Hammarén and Rasmus Ohlander (6,007 admissions, Scanbox)
• Historja Stitches for Sápmi by Thomas Jackson (4,163, TriArt), double Guldbagge winner 2023.
  

Among Nordic -non-Swedish films-, the biggest hits were:

• Denmark’s Rose by Niels Arden Oplev (18,615 admissions, Studio E Entertainment)
• Finland’s Compartment No6 by Juko Kuosmanen (16,310 admissions, Folkets Bio)
• Norway’s The Worst Person in the World (10,196 admissions, TriArt).
  

Looking at 2023, Stål underlined that several of last year’s Swedish films were still among the most popular in cinemas late January: Ted Kjellsson’s family film Håkan Bråkan, Long Live the Bonus Family, Crazy Pictures’ sci-fi UFO Sweden and Tarik Saleh’s Cannes Best Script winning film Boy from Heaven.

SEE UFO TRAILER

Upcoming titles that should find an audience he says, include the Göteborg competition entries Exodus by Abbe Hassan, documentary The King by Karin af Klintberg, about the Swedish monarch Carl XVI Gustav, the dramedy Second Act by Mårten Klingberg starring Lena Olin and Rolf Lassgård, One Day All This Will Be Yours by Andreas Öhman, and Anders Hazelius’s youth-oriented Forever about a female football team.

To download the SWEDISH 2022 ADMISSION CHARTS: CLICK HERE.