Jordan
Jordan is one of the most sought-after places on earth to put a camera. Wadi Rum's desert and the rock city of Petra have stood in for other worlds and other eras across a long run of major productions — Denis Villeneuve's Dune films, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Aladdin, The Martian, reaching back to Lawrence of Arabia — and the country has built a professional service industry around that appeal. In May 2025 it sharpened the offer considerably, raising its production cash rebate to as much as 45%. Canada's link is a modern 2016 treaty, negotiated between the Royal Film Commission and Telefilm, and the corridor is already in motion: The Orange Grove, a Canada-Jordan co-production from director Murad Abu Eisheh with the veteran Québec producer Roger Frappier, is in development.
The 2016 treaty is a modern, flexible instrument — a 15% participation floor, third-State partners welcome, generous personnel rules. On the Canadian side, CPTC and provincial credits apply to eligible Canadian expenditure. The Jordanian draw is the Royal Film Commission's cash rebate, raised in May 2025 to a tiered maximum of 45% of qualifying Jordanian spend — among the most aggressive location incentives in the region. Confirm the rebate tiers, qualifying-spend rules, and caps with the Royal Film Commission before budgeting. Current as of June 2026.
Jordan's strength is location and the service industry built around it. Wadi Rum, Petra, the desert highlands, the Dead Sea, and the streets of Amman give a single production base an extraordinary visual range, and decades of hosting international shoots have produced experienced crews, fixers, and equipment infrastructure used to working at scale and in English. The country's blockbuster filmography — the Dune films, recent Star Wars, Aladdin, The Martian — is the clearest proof of capacity.
The Royal Film Commission is the centre of the ecosystem — it administers the treaty on the Jordanian side and operates the cash rebate, which it raised in May 2025 to a tiered maximum of 45% of qualifying Jordanian spend. That rate, announced at Cannes, is among the most aggressive location incentives in the region and is squarely aimed at drawing more international production into the country.
The industry meeting point is the Amman International Film Festival and its industry arm, Amman Film Industry Days (AFID), which runs a market and pitching platforms for projects in development and post-production. It is the natural venue for meeting Jordanian producers and for advancing a co-production — indeed, the Canada-Jordan project The Orange Grove moved through exactly this circuit.
Why this corridor
Jordan is a new corridor that is already live. The treaty dates only to 2016, but it is a modern instrument with a low 15% participation floor, and it sits over both a world-class location-and-service base and a freshly enlarged 45% rebate. The clearest evidence that the corridor works is The Orange Grove, the in-development Canada-Jordan co-production from director Murad Abu Eisheh with Québec's Roger Frappier — proof that the bilateral structure is not theoretical even at this early stage.
The natural shape of a Canada-Jordan project is location-driven: ambitious, visually expansive work that uses Jordan's landscapes and crews and stacks the Royal Film Commission rebate with Canadian CPTC. Documentary and auteur-driven fiction fit too, and Jordan's own cinema — internationally visible since Theeb — gives a Canadian partner serious creative collaborators. Rubedo is looking for Jordanian producers connected to the Royal Film Commission and the Amman Film Industry Days circuit, and for Canadian producers drawn to a strong location base, an aggressive rebate, and a corridor that is new but already in motion.
Where to start
If you're a researcher, student, or filmmaker interested in this corridor, here's where to begin.
Start here
The Royal Film Commission – Jordan administers the treaty and operates the cash rebate; it is the single point of contact on the Jordanian side, and its English-language resources cover the rebate terms and production support. Telefilm Canada administers the treaty on the Canadian side. Because the rebate was substantially revised in 2025, confirm the current tiers and caps with the Royal Film Commission directly.
The co-production forum
The Amman International Film Festival and its industry programme, Amman Film Industry Days, run a market and project-pitching platforms each year — the most direct route to meeting Jordanian producers and advancing a project, and the circuit through which the Canada-Jordan co-production The Orange Grove developed.
From the Canadian side
There is no large discrete Jordanian community in Canada to organize around; the more useful entry is the broader Arabic-speaking and Arab-Canadian creative community, alongside Canadian film festivals that program Arab and Middle Eastern cinema. The treaty's Arabic-language versioning provision connects to that community.
Cultural signal
Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar, 2014) — shot in Wadi Rum, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film — is the clearest measure of Jordanian cinema's reach: a Bedouin coming-of-age story told with the same landscape the world's biggest productions travel there to use. It is the register this corridor is well suited to support.If you're a Jordanian filmmaker, producer, or production professional interested in developing this corridor — or a Canadian producer curious about what a first Canada-Jordan structure could look like — we'd like to hear from you.
contact@rubedo.ca