Cinema of Sweden

Cinema of Sweden
A movie theater in Vällingby
No. of screens	830 (2011)
• Per capita	9.9 per 100,000 (2011)
Main distributors	Sf Film 19.0% Walt Disney 13.0% Warner (Fox) 13.0%
Produced feature films (2011)
Fictional	23 (53.5%)
Animated	-
Documentary	15 (34.9%)
Number of admissions (2011)
Total	16,269,803
• Per capita	1.92 (2012)
National films	3,110,407 (19.1%)
Gross box office (2011)
Total	SEK 1.56 billion
National films	SEK 266 million (17.0%)

Swedish cinema is known for including many acclaimed movies; during the 20th century the industry was the most prominent of Scandinavia. This is largely due to the popularity and prominence of directors Victor Sjöström and Ingmar Bergman; and more recently Roy Andersson, Lasse Hallström and Lukas Moodysson.

Swedish filmmaking rose to international prominence when Svenska Biografteatern moved from Kristianstad to Lidingö in 1911. During the next decade the company's two star-directors, Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, produced many outstanding silent films, some of the best of them adaptations of stories by the Nobel-prizewinning novelist Selma Lagerlöf. Sjöström's most respected films often made poetic use of the Swedish landscape and developed moving studies of character and emotion. Stiller fostered the early popularity of Greta Garbo, particularly through the Gösta Berlings saga (1924). Many of the films made at the Biografteatern had a significant impact on German directors of the silent and early sound eras, largely because Germany remained cut off from French, British, and American influences through World War I (1914–1918).

In the mid-twenties both of these directors and Garbo moved to the United States to work for MGM, bringing Swedish influence to Hollywood. The departure left a vacuum in Swedish cinema, which subsequently went into a financial crisis. Both directors later returned to Sweden, but Stiller died soon after his return while Sjöström returned to theatre work for most of the remainder of his career.

The advent of the talking movie at the beginning of the 1930s brought about a financial stabilization for Swedish cinema, but the industry sacrificed artistic and international ambitions for this financial success. Some provincial comedies emerged, created for the local market.