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BOX OFFICE Finland

Finnish cinema heading for an all-time record

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- Local releases in 2015 are nearing 2.4 million admissions for the first time in modern box-office statistics

Finnish cinema heading for an all-time record
The Reunion by Taneli Mustonen

Finnish cinema, which has in 2015 – for the fourth time in six years – registered more than two million admissions, looks set to break the record number of 2.4 million for the first time in modern box-office statistics (which were instigated in 1970). According to the Finnish Film Foundation, 25 domestic productions have been released this year, and another nine have been scheduled. So far, seven have sold more than 100,000 tickets.

“I think one of the reasons is that when film funding was increased, we decided to bring about more diversity in the production of Finnish films,” explained Irina Krohn, CEO of the Finnish Film Foundation. “Local audiences have accordingly developed a new image of domestic cinema – it is diverse, high-quality and sometimes very funny. Also, we do not have different support schemes for art films and commercial films that are aimed at box-office success – they all start on the same footing, with different goals that are equally important.” 

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This year, Finnish director Taneli Mustonen’s The Reunion [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
– a local version of Danish director Niels Nørløv Hansen’s 2011 comedy [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
about old classmates, who meet again 20 years after they left school – was the first Finnish film to sell 150,000 tickets within a week. The Markus Selin-Jukka Helle production for Solar Films has now surpassed admissions of 506,000, in the 2000s performing second only to Aleksi Mäkelä’s Bad Boys [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(2003), which reached 615,000. 

“Of course, the national digitalisation of the cinemas, which was completed in 2013, has helped to improve admission figures: people living in smaller places, in the countryside, can now enjoy the premieres at the same time as the big cities. And domestic films have always been more popular there,” Krohn concluded. So far in 2015, the 300 Finnish screens have recorded over six million admissions and are likely to exceed seven million for the sixth year running. 

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