The drama based on Väino Linna’s literary classic sold a staggering 923,922 tickets, making it the sixth biggest Finnish film of all time on the Finnish film chart, dominated since 1955 by Edvin Laine’s own film version of the same book, watched by over 2.8 million cinemagoers.

Louhimies’ war drama released by SF Studios was among 39 new Finnish films that sold a total of 2.4 million tickets for a 27% market share in 2017.

According to preliminary figures from the Finnish Film Foundation, this is the sixth year in a row that domestic films pass the two million admission mark.

Other local films that secured a place at the Top 10 include the comedy sequel Lapland Odyssey 3 by Tiina Lymi (270,469 admissions) and the children’s film Jill, Joy & the Mysterious Stranger by Saara Cantell (214,510).

Total admissions passed 9 million – the first time since 1983 - representing a 3.4% increase from 2016, and BO grew by nearly 9%.

The most popular Nordic feature  film was the Swedish comedy Solsidan-The Movie which sold 43,717 tickets in 2017 and nearly 100,000 after two weeks, while the Norwegian music biopic Marcus & Marticus-sammen om drømmen was the top selling documentary film (6,496 admissions), ahead of the local punk rock ban PKN’s last journey together in The Punk Voyage (5,151).

Commenting on last year’s cinema attendance, Lasse Saarinen, CEO at the Finnish Film Foundation said: “2017 was an exceptional year for Finnish cinema with one film (Aku Louhimies’s The Unknown Soldier) taking over 10 % of the total cinema admissions. For 2018, we of course do not expect to have a film with quite the same level of impact but luckily we have many films coming out that can reach an admission level between 100,000 and 300,000. We have therefore positive expectations that domestic films will also reach over two million admissions, as they have every year since 2012. In addition, I am very happy that there is a great variety in the films and their themes coming out in 2018. Finnish film audiences will have a domestic film to suit every taste also this year.”

To see the Finnish 2017 Admissions Charts CLICK HERE.