The Hollywood production, "American Beauty", was this year's favourite among Swiss cinemagoers. Swiss films struggled to attract audiences in the face of competition from US productions, but they did better than in previous years.

The Oscar-winning satire, "American Beauty", starring Kevin Spacey, attracted just over 645,000 cinemagoers, according to statistics released by the Swiss Association of Film Distributors.

Runners-up were other US productions, including "The Sixth Sense" (640,000 viewers) and "Erin Brokovich" (565,000). These were followed by "Mission Impossible 2", "Gladiator" and "James Bond - The World is not Enough".

Swiss films did better than expected. "Pane e tulipani", an Italian/Swiss co-production had been seen by 230,000 people by the end of November. "Komiker" was second with nearly 160,000 tickets sold.

Swiss productions are expected to account for a market share of about four per cent this year. This is the best result since 1996.

According to preliminary figures, US films increased their share of the Swiss market to 77 per cent, slightly up from the previous year.

The Association of Film Distributors says Swiss cinemas continue to offer a broad range of films, in terms of their country of origin and genre. This compares favourably with neighbouring countries.

The Swiss film industry receives subsidies of about SFr50 million ($30 million) annually.

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