With a reduced price of 3.50 euros the entrancethe Film Festival returns from this Monday, May 15, to Thursday, May 18, to try to revitalize theater attendance, which has not yet recovered from the blow caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

So far this year, attendance accumulates a 32% drop compared to the average of the five years prior to the outbreak of the covid (2015-2019), according to data from the consulting firm Comscore.

The twentieth edition of the Film Festival, a joint initiative of the main federation of exhibitors (FECE) and distributors (Fedicine), will be held over four days, from Monday to Thursday, and will include the participation of 326 cinemas throughout Spainwhich add up to a total of 2,932 screens.

On those days there will be big commercial productions like “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3“, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves“, “Super Mario Bros. The Movie“, “john wick 4“or the Spanish comedy”Go Holidays!“.

But also independent proposals like “the eternal daughterJoanna Hogg’s “Action Thriller Starring Tilda Swinton”siege“, with Natalia de Molina; the winner in Berlin “20,000 bees“, about ‘trans’ childhood, or the author’s documentary “the bad family“, among other.

Since the beginning of January, the average weekly attendance at cinemas in Spain has been around 68% compared to the average for the period 2015-2019. Only one week, from April 7 to 13, coinciding with the premiere of “Super Mario Bros”, the 100% barrier was exceeded -up to 109%-, that is, there were more viewers than in the reference period.

The following week with the highest attendance was the previous one, with 97%, coinciding with the premiere of the latest installment of the “Dungeons and Dragons” saga, and the third, with 83%, from April 21 to 27, the week in which “Infernal Possession” and “What a vacation!” were released.

This event to encourage attendance at movie theaters as a social and cultural habit was held for the first time in June 2009 and from 2011 it became semi-annual, only interrupted by the pandemic.

The last edition, last October, recorded 1.3 million viewers in four days, 82.2% more than that of a year ago, the first post-pandemic, which had 704,927 attendees in three days.