Switzerland
Switzerland's co-production treaty with Canada is the newest in the entire network — signed in November 2023, entering into force in August 2024. The corridor is young and its production track record is modest. But Switzerland's significance to the Rubedo project runs deeper than production volume. This is the country that processes more than half the world's gold. The Bank for International Settlements sits in Basel. The World Economic Forum convenes in Davos. The Swiss franc is the world's preeminent safe-haven currency. For a project built on gold as a unit of account, Switzerland is not a peripheral corridor — it is the territory where the monetary thesis meets its physical and institutional centre of gravity.
Swiss incentives are selective rather than automatic — PICS is a cash rebate awarded on application, not an entitlement. Canadian CPTC and provincial credits apply to eligible Canadian expenditure. The two-month advance application requirement is longer than most Canadian bilaterals. The 2024 broadcaster investment obligation is new and expected to increase domestic co-financing availability. Eurimages may provide additional co-financing for qualifying projects (Switzerland is a Eurimages member).
Switzerland's production landscape is small-scale, high-quality, and decentralised across the country's linguistic regions. There are no mega-studio facilities — production is location-based or uses smaller studios in Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne, and Ticino. A new joint venture, Swiss Studios AG, was founded in 2024 by major producers including Elite, Praesens-Film, and Contrast to consolidate development-to-distribution services. The country produces roughly forty to fifty features per year, internationally oriented but modest in scale.
The crew base is highly skilled and multilingual by necessity — German, French, Italian, and Romansh are all working languages depending on region. Productions routinely shoot and post in the relevant language region or mix crews across cantons. This multilingual infrastructure is a genuine structural feature for projects that need to work across European linguistic boundaries.
SRG SSR, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, is the dominant public broadcaster-financier, investing over CHF 30 million annually in Swiss film and co-productions across its four language units (SRF, RTS, RSI, RTR). For a Canada-Switzerland co-production, SRG SSR is the natural first institutional conversation on the Swiss side — the equivalent of RAI Cinema in Italy or the broadcasters in France, though at a smaller scale.
Swiss Films is the national promotion agency, handling festival circulation, market access, and co-production matchmaking. They publish annual guides on co-producing with Switzerland — a practical resource for any foreign producer exploring the corridor. Swiss production companies with international co-production experience include Alina Film, Nadasdy Film, Langfilm, and Praesens-Film, all of which have worked across European corridors.Switzerland has a strong documentary tradition with consistent presence at major festivals including Visions du Réel (Nyon), IDFA, and Hot Docs. The Locarno Film Festival (August) is one of Europe's premier auteur events, with its Piazza Grande open-air screenings and a strong industry programme. For documentary work — particularly the kind of research-driven, subject-matter-expert documentary that this corridor is well positioned to support — the Swiss ecosystem is experienced and internationally connected.
Why this corridor
Rubedo is building infrastructure for cross-border creative collaboration. Not a single film — a network. Canada's co-production treaty system covers fifty-seven territories, and the thesis is that gold denomination makes the entire network navigable as unified infrastructure for the first time. Switzerland is the corridor where that thesis meets the physical reality of gold itself.
Switzerland processes more than half the world's gold. Valcambi, PAMP, Argor-Heraeus, and Metalor — clustered in the Ticino region — refine over two thousand tonnes annually for global bullion, jewellery, and investment markets. The Bank for International Settlements in Basel coordinates monetary policy across central banks. The Swiss National Bank holds over a thousand tonnes of gold reserves. The Swiss franc's status as the world's safe-haven currency emerged from the same neutrality that made Switzerland the trusted centre of global wealth management. This is not incidental context. For a project that uses gold as its unit of account, these are the institutions and processes that make gold function as money in the modern world.
We are particularly interested in this corridor for documentary work exploring the mechanics and history of gold as a global monetary instrument — work that would draw on Swiss institutional, archival, and subject-matter expertise. The PICS rebate at 40% for minority co-productions, the CHF 150,000 minimum for documentary, the absence of a cultural test, and the 15% minimum contribution threshold create one of the most accessible documentary co-production architectures in the treaty network. This corridor is not for large-scale production. It is for research-driven work made by people with deep subject-matter knowledge and a story to tell about how value moves through the world.
Switzerland is one of fifty-seven territories in the Canadian co-production treaty network.
Where to start
If you're a researcher, student, or potential collaborator interested in this corridor, here's what we know about where to begin.
If you're interested in the production side
Swiss Films (swissfilms.ch) is the national promotion agency and the most direct entry point for international co-production inquiries. They publish annual guides on co-producing with Switzerland, facilitate market access, and handle co-production matchmaking. Start there.The Federal Office of Culture (FOC) administers both the treaty and the PICS rebate. Their website documents application procedures, eligibility criteria, and current funding rounds.
The Locarno Film Festival (August) is Switzerland's most significant industry event, with a strong co-production and development programme. Visions du Réel (Nyon, April) is one of Europe's leading documentary festivals with a dedicated industry platform — the natural event for anyone exploring documentary co-production with Switzerland.
If you're interested in the research side
Switzerland's significance for economic and monetary history research is concentrated in a small number of world-class institutions.
The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva offers programmes in international finance, monetary theory, and economic history that are among the strongest in the world. The University of Zurich has a strong economic history faculty. ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva are both significant research institutions with relevant departments. The Swiss National Bank's Study Center Gerzensee is a policy-research hub focused on monetary economics.
Ernst Baltensperger and Peter Kugler's Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century (2017) is the standard scholarly reference on Swiss monetary institutions and the franc's development as a global safe-haven currency.
The Bank for International Settlements in Basel maintains research publications, statistical databases, and historical archives related to global monetary coordination. The BIS is not a publicly accessible institution in the way a university is, but its published research is freely available and its historical role — from the interwar gold settlements through Bretton Woods to the Basel banking accords — is extensively documented.
The gold refineries in Ticino — Valcambi, PAMP, Argor-Heraeus, and Metalor — are private industrial operations, not research institutions. But the story of how two-thirds of the world's gold passes through a single Swiss canton is a documentary subject in itself, and the regional government and industry associations (Swiss Better Gold Association, LBMA Swiss Good Delivery network) are potential institutional contacts for research-driven production.
For documentary producers specifically
The documentary co-production pathway through Switzerland is unusually accessible. The PICS rebate at 40% for minority co-productions, the CHF 150,000 minimum eligible spend for documentary minorities, and the absence of a cultural test mean that a well-structured Canada-Switzerland documentary co-production can be built at a budget level that is realistic for independent producers and first-time co-producers.
SRG SSR's four-language broadcasting structure means there are multiple potential broadcast partners depending on the linguistic focus of the project. A documentary about the BIS would naturally engage the German-language SRF; a documentary about Geneva's role in international finance would engage the French-language RTS. The multilingual structure is a feature, not a complication — it means there are multiple entry points into the Swiss broadcasting ecosystem.
Switzerland's strong documentary festival presence — Visions du Réel, Locarno's documentary sections, consistent selections at IDFA and Hot Docs — demonstrates that the ecosystem supports exactly the kind of research-driven, intellectually ambitious documentary work that this corridor is best positioned to produce.
Canadian institutions
The Swiss Canadian Chamber of Commerce operates national and regional chapters and runs business forums, trade missions, and networking events. These are oriented toward business rather than film, but for the kind of research-driven documentary producer this corridor is designed to attract, the business network may be more directly relevant than a film industry contact.
Swissnex — Switzerland's innovation and consulate network — operates in several countries and facilitates academic and creative exchanges. Swiss clubs and societies in major Canadian cities maintain cultural programming.The Swiss diaspora in Canada is modest — approximately 40,000 Swiss citizens and 155,000 people of Swiss ancestry, spread across Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec. There is no single concentrated community centre equivalent to what exists for the Italian or Latvian diasporas. The institutional connections for this corridor run through business and academic channels rather than diaspora cultural infrastructure.
If you're a filmmaker, researcher, economist, or institution in Switzerland — or anywhere — and any of this is interesting to you, we'd like to hear from you.
contact@rubedo.ca