Canadian producer Gabriella Martinelli has launched a new Toronto-based production outfit, Capri Films, in partnership with Polish recording impresario Wladislow Bartoszewicz. The first project under the Capri banner will be Between Strangers, starring Sophia Loren and Gerard Depardieu, directed by Loren's son Eduardo Ponti and now in post production. Martinelli and Bartoszewicz are producer and executive producer respectively.

The second project will be an adaptation of novelist Nino Ricci's trilogy Lives Of The Saints, a mini-series to be co-produced with Italy's Media Trade and Canada's CTV Network. Screenwriter Malcolm MacRury has signed on to write the adaptation.

The company is also setting up two feature adaptations of the work of Canadian playwright and actress Ann-Marie MacDonald. The first, Fall On Your Knees, based on her novel of the same name; the second, a modern day spin on King Lear, entitled Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). As well Martinelli is in discussion with a British co-producer on an adaptation of journalist Robert MacNeil's Burden Of Desire, a historical novel set against the Halifax Explosion of 1917. John Kent Harrison is attached to direct.