Sweden's Film i Vast scores record admissions

The regional film fund was involved in 15 local and nine international productions, which were nominated for Academy Awards, European Film Awards, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and won prizes in Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto.

UK director James Watkins’ horror thriller The Woman in Black reached a 14.6 million attendance worldwide, while Danish director Nicolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair topped a million and scooped two Silver Bears at the Berlinale in 2012.

In Denmark, 38% of the Danish market share was controlled by Film i Väst co-productions.

The most popular Swedish feature was Staffan Lindberg’s romantic comedy Once upon a Time in Phuket, which took 400,000 domestic admissions, followed by Babak Najafi’s crime drama, Easy Money II, which drew 324,000.

Film i Väst projects accounted for 57% of the local market share.

Owned by the region of Västra Götaland, Film i Väst has an annual turnover of $15.7m (SEK 100m) to yearly co-produce and co-finance around 30 Swedish and international features, the same number of shorts and documentaries, adding a handful of television series.

But competition is growing from both Germany and Denmark. During the last five years average production costs for a Swedish film has gone up by 30%, while the film centre - 70kms from the city of Göteborg - has maintained its quality and volume on the same investment.

Film i Väst managing director Tomas Eskildsson said: “This will not be possible in the future. Our challenge will be to deliver fewer, but still artistically and audience-wise successful co-productions, which will financially benefit the region as much as they do today.”

Film and television production in the Västra Götaland region has app 2,500 full-time employees.