Laura Carollo
Research expert covering cinema and film
Film industry in Sweden - statistics & facts
Like most Scandinavian cinema markets, Sweden struggled more than the majority of countries in Europe to bounce back during the second year of the coronavirus outbreak. In 2023, it recorded an annual growth of 11.5 percent in box office gross among European economies. Sweden had the 18th highest cinema attendance in Europe in 2022, yet the figure – about eleven million – was still significantly lower than the number of movie tickets sold in the Nordic country in 2019. The relevance of Swedish movies in those results also declined. In 2020, over 25 percent of Sweden's cinema attendance came from domestic films. Two years later, that share stood at 14.9 percent.
Swedish moviemaking
Despite accounting for little more than one-tenth of tickets sold, Swedish movies made up for nearly one-fifth of films theatrically released in Sweden in 2021. Filmmaking in the Scandinavian country followed a clear pattern that year. About half of all Swedish movies to hit the big screen were documentaries. This trend left relatively smaller room for the genres within the realm of fiction. In 2021, the number of fictional feature films made in Sweden added up to 25 – with one of them being a hybrid between documentary and nonfactual story. Since 2011, only twice that figure surpassed 30.Gender equality in Swedish cinema
Created by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the Bechdel test became more notorious after the traditional Swedish Film Institute supported its adoption in the early 2010s. It consists in asking whether a movie includes at least two women talking to each other about something other than a male character. It promptly boosted Sweden's reputation for championing gender equality in film. In 2021, that translated into almost 40 percent of domestic movies having leading roles shared between male and female protagonists, up from 24 percent among foreign films. Meanwhile, 21 percent of Swedish productions had female leads versus 31 percent of movies made elsewhere. On the other hand, the average wages of women directing and/or producing films and theater plays in Sweden was nearly 15 percent lower than that of their male counterparts in 2021. In 2022, female professionals enjoyed a higher average.
