Production up, audiences down in Europe

It has been a great year for European production, with overall figures up by 37 to 798 films produced in the 25 countries of the EU last year according to figures published by the European Audiovisual Observatory. But although there were differences locally, the overall cinema attendance fell by about 11%. France is still the biggest producer, with 240 films (which parly explains its strong presence at the upcoming Cannes festival). European cinema represents about 24% of ticket sales, although one of the big trends recently is for local films to break records in their home turf without being able to score across the Union as a whole.