On the occasion of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival the European Audiovisual Observatory releases its first estimates for European cinema attendance in 2017. In line with the high levels observed in the previous two years, the Observatory estimates that total admissions in the European Union decreased only slightly by 0.7% to 985 million tickets sold in 2017. While this is 6.6 million less than in 2016, it still represents the second highest admission level registered in the EU since 2004. 2017 results hence confirm the regained strength of the European theatrical market which had been declining from 2010 up until 2014. If you include non-EU territories in Europe, 2017 actually saw the highest admission levels of the past decades with estimated record admissions of over 1.29 billion tickets.