Germany Celebrates Its First Kinofest With the Most Popular Cinema Weekend of the Year

Overwhelmingly positive response of the first nationwide KINOFEST

Berlin ( September 12, 2022 ) -

Intensive preparations, a huge variety of programs and an overwhelming response from the audience: the Kinofest that took place over the weekend not only managed to break the previous visitor record of the year, but also the weekend with the highest number of visitors in the last ten years to tie in September 2019.1

The figures for the first nationwide Kinofest are available.2 The 685 participating cinemas with their 3,193 screens and 560,878 seats recorded almost 1.1 million visitors. The event exceeded all expectations.3

The most popular films by attendance were:

  • Minions – The Rise of Gru
  • After Forever
  • Where the Crawdads Sing
  • The Kangaroo Conspiracy
  • Top Gun: Maverick

Christine Berg, Member of the Board of HDF KINO: “Our goal was to celebrate cinema with a low-threshold offer and to bring back the magic of the big screen to the audience. We have succeeded in every respect. We would like to thank all the cinemas and partners involved for their great work and the audience for the great response. This lays the foundation for an event that will take place regularly from now on, which we will establish as a fixture in the annual event calendar with this very good start.”

The Kinofest is an initiative of the industry associations HDF KINO, AG Kino Gilde, the Federal Association of Municipal Film Theatres, the Association of Film Distributors (Vdf) and the AG Distribution. It was funded by the Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA). The agency The Yellow Code, run by cinema expert Florian Ritter, was in charge of project management of the Kinofest.

  1. The weekend with the most visitors so far (Sat. & Sun.) of the last ten years: 7./8. September 2019 with 1,128,000 visitors
  2. Figures determined by comScore Movies / Rentrak Germany GmbH, September 12, 2022
  3. A detailed analysis of the results is planned for September 15, 2022