Life in German film theaters is not just about the exciting festivals or the thrilling films that are showcased on the big screens. It’s also about the day-to-day operations, the experiences of the audiences, the reactions to different films and much more. The Film Funding Agency (FFA), as part of its annual exercise, publishes a detailed report at the Berlinale, highlighting the performance of these theaters in the previous year. This time, the FFA’s report paints a mixed picture. While there are signs of recovery and growth post the lifting of Corona restrictions, the film theaters are yet to reach the footfall numbers of 2019.
In its report, the FFA revealed that about 95.7 million tickets were sold in the year 2023. This is a significant increase from the previous year, with almost 20 million more tickets sold. However, when compared to the pre-pandemic times, there is still a noticeable gap of 23 million tickets. This translates into a reduction of approximately 19.4 percent. On the brighter side, the annual sales were almost 930 million euros, which is a positive sign. Despite the drop in the number of visitors, the revenues did not dip as much, thanks to the increase in ticket prices. The decline in revenue is a more modest figure of just under ten percent.
2023 was the first year since 2019 when three films managed to attract more than five million visits. These films were “Barbie,” “Avatar: The Way Of Water” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” In total, 24 films welcomed over a million visits. Peter Dinges, the head of FFA, expressed his satisfaction with the diversity of films that made their way to the cinemas in 2023. He particularly mentioned “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as the films that created a buzz on social media under the name “Barbenheimer”. He was pleased that the year 2023 saw cinema being a major talking point again.
Despite the overall positive trend, German films continue to struggle. This is a situation Claudia Roth aims to change with a major film funding reform. The number of tickets sold for German films dropped from 24.9 to 22.4 million. However, there was a silver lining with the German market share going up from 21.5 to 24.3 percent between 2019 and 2023. The list of top ten films featured “The Three ??? – Inheritance of the Dragon”, the only purely German production, and it was at the ninth position.
