The Swiss film industry gets a shot in the arm

8.4 million tickets were sold in Swiss theaters between January and July 2006. That's an 11.5% increase over the first half of last year, and Pro Cinema has additional good news: three Swiss movies are in the top ten.

367,000 people went to see «Grounding», giving the Swissair movie third place. 194,000 viewers saw the Marco Rima vehicle «Handyman», while the high-performance drama «Vitus» made it to tenth place with 166,000 tickets sold. Number 1 was «Ice Age 2» with over one million viewers; it is only the fourth movie in history to sell more than 1 million tickets in Switzerland.

Second place went to «The Da Vinci Code» (540,000 viewers). Others in the top ten are «Brokeback Mountain», «Inside Man» and «Mission: Impossible 3».

This gives Swiss cinema a market share of exactly 11.6%, which is more than before, but is mainly due to the fact that a lot of Swiss movies were released in the first half of 2006.