Antonio Banderas' Malaga-based Green Moon Productions and Antonio Perez's Seville-based Maestranza Films have signed a new film-per-year co-production agreement.

Signed in Berlin, where Banderas was on hand to present new features as both director (Panorama title Summer Rain) and actor (competition contender Bordertown), the agreement will focus on backing new directors and other emerging behind- and on-camera talent from the southern Spanish region of Andalusia.

The first film of the agreement will be announced in the weeks ahead, possibly during the upcoming Spanish Film Festival of Malaga (March 9-17), where Maestranza will premiere its co-production Thieves (Ladrones). Budgets on the co-productions aren't likely to exceed the Spanish average of about $2.6m (Euros 2m).

'I have always loved working with new talents, and Banderas is very excited and very involved in this project - he's read all the scripts,' said Maestranza's Perez, who helped launch the careers of directors such as Benito Zambrano (Solas), Mateo Gil (Nobody Knows Anybody) and Jaime Marques (Thieves).

'Green Moon in Spain was not created just to produce my own movies, it was created also to dynamise in a way the south of Spain in terms of making projects,' Banderas said in a recent interview with Screen International.

'We are going to try to provide [new talents] with the elements that they may need to tell stories. That is the vocation of this company.'

Summer Rain (El Camino De Los Ingleses) itself starred a cast of largely unknown local actors.

The deal marks Green Moon's first foray into third-party productions beyond Banderas' own films, which also include projects in development such as the $26m-plus (Euros 20m) epic about the last Caliph of Granada, Boabdil. Green Moon partners include Antonio Meliveo, also a composer who has worked frequently with Maestranza, Francisco Fortes and Banderas' brother Javier Dominguez.

In the Berlin Co-Production Market, Maestranza's Perez and Nacho Santamaria fielded international interest on ambitious new $9.2m (Euros 7m) Seville-set period drama La Roldana, to be directed by Laura Mana and star Paz Vega.

Perez noted that the two companies aren't ruling out the possibility of taking reciprocal co-production stakes in other projects such as Boabdil and Roldana.

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