Bauer Martinez Studios has made a raft of sales on Giorgio Serafini's English-language picture, The Good War, and has also unveiled a 4-picture slate of international English-language co-productions.

Buena Vista International has acquired rights to The Good War for Benelux and Scandinavia. Negro Y Azul has bought rights for Spain and Portugal. Sales have also been wrapped up for Poland and Turkey, and Bauer Martinez head Philippe Martinez is in advanced negotiations with Japan and France.

The $4.5m movie was produced by Italy's Smile Production and Orango Film with Martinez executive producing. The film is set in a Texas prisomer of war camp in 1946 and tells the story of the friendship that develops between an Italian prisoner and a US prison guard. ICM is handling US sales rights on the film, which stars Roy Scheider and Luca Zingaretti.

Bauer Martinez is also distributing Los Angeles-based Serafini's next project, A Woman In Love, a co-production with Negro Y Azul's Juan Montilla. Written by Martinez and Serafini, the $4.5 million lyrical love story stars Rutger Hauer as an opera stage director and Victoria Abril, and starts shooting in August in Turkey.

Other projects for Bauer include Absolon, a $10m action thriller directed by Russell Mulcahy (Resurrection, The Highlander) and written by Brad Mirman (Body Of Evidence). Martinez has closed sales at Cannes on all territories except for Japan, Korea, US and Australia. The film, which Bauer is co-producing and distributing with Richard Rionda's Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures, stars Christopher Lambert.

Bauer, a 3-year old company with offices in France and the US, has also sealed a co-production deal with Claude Leger of Canada's Transfilm for a love story which is entitled Cuba Jazz and starts shooting at the end of this year in Cuba and Montreal. Bauer's slate also features Crime Spree, a $9m film written and directed by Brad Mirman starring Christopher Lambert and French rocker Johnny Hallyday, which shoots in 2002 in Canada and Paris.