Spanish outfit Tesela Producciones will produce local director Achero Manas new family drama Franny & Joe (working title) and Argentinian director Adolfo Aristarain's political project Timote.

Both projects are currently at the script stage.

Manas is currently on the third version of his script for Franny & Joe about a father and daughter who try to improve their relationship after the mother's death. Tesela is searching for the cast and hopes to shoot sometime in the summer.

'Achero is an excellent director who received widespread acclaim for his previous films,' Cristina Sutherland of Tesela Producciones told ScreenDaily.

Achero's 2003 film November (Noviembre), won theYouth Jury Awardat San Sebastian and the Fipresci prize at Toronto while El Bola picked up a European Film award andfour Goyas in 2001. Both films were produced by Tesela.

Aristarain's new film is based on the novel Timote by Jose Pablo Feinmann about the assasination of the former Argentinian president Pedro Aramburu by Peronist guerrilas.

The novel is not yet published, but Aristarain has already bought the rights to it and is currently writing the script. The director previously adapted Feinmann's book The Last Days Of The Victim for his 1982 film of the same name.

Madrid based Tesela Producciones is also working on Daniel Sanchez Arevalo's new film Gordos, currently in post production, about life's excesses and deficiencies.Itstars Spain's leading lights Raul Arevalo and Antonio De la Torre, who starred alongside each other in Che: Part 2 and DarkBlueAlmostBlack.

The company is also in post production on Alberto Rodriguez' After about a group of 30 somethings reliving their youth for a night. Both films will be released by Alta Films later this year.

Other Tesela success stories include Rodriguez' previous film 7 Virgenes (2005), which won the silver shell at San Sebastian, the romantic comedy Elsa Y Fred (2005), which won a couple of Argentinian Film Critics Association awards, and the prison drama La Fuga (2001), which picked up a Goya award.

Topics