Ameen Nayfeh follows 200 Meters with family film Jo of Montreal

Ameen Nayfeh, the director behind the Palestinian drama 200 Meters, has turned to a feel-good family film for children with Jo of Montreal, Variety reported on 14 September 2026. The film stars Hamzah Baareh as Yusuf, a 12-year-old boy visiting family in Jordan. He gets stuck.

Yusuf is left stranded in a remote Jordanian village after that family visit. He is taken in by Abu Khalil and his wife Fatima in Shoubak, in the south of the country. Abu Khalil, played by Kamel El Basha, is a retired teacher turned shepherd.

Yusuf arrives disconnected from his homeland and unsure of the place around him. Through life with Abu Khalil, he begins to rediscover his roots and to care for local heritage. That heritage centres on the community's crusader-era castle, known as Montreal, a medieval stone fortress that gives the film its name and its focus.

The village story gains urgency when a development scheme threatens Abu Khalil's home and the old village itself. Yusuf teams up with former rivals to help protect what is under threat. An earlier trade report had described Yusuf as a spoiled 12-year-old gamer, which helps explain why village life feels so strange to him at first, Variety reported in August.

Nayfeh took the project to producer Bassam Alasad of Dubai-based Creative Media Solutions, who is producing the film. It was greenlit, meaning it was formally approved for production, during the war on Gaza. 200 Meters tells of a Palestinian family separated by the wall dividing Israel from the Occupied Territories, and it featured two of Nayfeh's young nieces.

Nayfeh said coming-of-age, feel-good films for children barely exist in the Arab world, and the independent film scene is not interested in making them. He described Jo of Montreal as the story of a boy who arrives in a place he does not understand, only to discover that it holds a part of him, Screen Daily reported in July. Shooting began on locations in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The project is counted among Jordan's upcoming films.

What makes this stand out is the shift in tone and audience. Nayfeh built his name with a tense drama about separation. Here the engine is a child, a village and an old castle, told for young viewers and their families.