Canada’s capital city has stood in for Washington D.C. with its many embassies and government buildings, a European backdrop with courtyards and restaurants, a New York setting complete with office buildings and urban parks, and a snowy Christmas town as seen in the Canadian Screen Award-winning film Christmas Jars and countless projects from the likes of Netflix, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Hallmark, Lifetime, OWN, etc.
“I was raised in France, lived in Toronto for 10 years, in Manhattan for 15 years, in Montreal for 5 years and I’ve seen how Ottawa is one of a kind,” says Sandrine Pechels de Saint Sardos, film commissioner for the Ottawa Film Office (OFO.) “You can be in an 18th century courtyard in the morning, a rural environment in the afternoon and at night, in a big city vibe. The region is very versatile.”
In 2024, Ottawa generated over $52 million in live-action production. To expand on this growth, the OFO continues to advocate for stable tax incentives and is working to improve legislation and establish a production fund. The not-for-profit is also laser-focused on building up its infrastructure, with plans to develop 40,000 to 50,000 square feet of new soundstage space – the first to be purpose-built in the city with VR/Led wall included.
“Ottawa offers a friendly, affordable boutique destination for filmmakers,” says Pechels de Saint Sardos. “We make sure that whoever is coming here has a great friendly experience and productivity is at its maximum so they can come back for more.”
Film crews are often a transient group of professionals who move from town to town, but the OFO has been working to foster a local talent pool that includes BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities, and offers resources and workshops that span everything from production accounting to location scouting.
To nurture the region’s workforce, the organization also works with guilds and unions like DGC Ontario and IATSE, media arts organizations like the Digital Arts Resource Centre, as well as post-secondary institutions such as Algonquin College, Collège La Cité, and Carleton University, while encouraging local producers to mentor up-and-coming talent.
Ottawa is eligible for the same 35 per cent tax incentive that is applicable to eligible Ontario productions, as well as an additional 10 per cent for being outside of the Greater Toronto Area. Provincial tax incentives are generally combined with the federal Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit (16 per cent) or the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit (25 per cent), and international productions can claim 21.5 per cent for labour and production costs.
There’s so much more that the OFO has been working on to welcome new productions, including working closely with the City of Ottawa to pass a film bylaw that streamlines the permitting process (City of Ottawa ‘s Event Central https://ottawa.ca/en/living-
With several waterways like the Rideau Canal (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, 300 heritage buildings, and unique attractions like the Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum, Ottawa has a lot to offer for the screen that nowhere else has. In 2024, there were 11 Christmas movies being filmed in Ottawa, Netflix’s Hot Frosty being one of them. Vicious’ s Paramount+ was also in town and Netflix’s Geek Girl for which two episodes were filmed in Ottawa and about Ottawa.
