Cologne-based production outfit Gemini Film is lining up three international features for production this year including Investigating Sex, written and to be directed by Alan Rudolph, which has Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte and Neve Campbell attached to star.

The $8.5m project is set to start shooting in North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin from May 1. Rudolph has adapted the 1920s-set story from a treatise by Andre Breton about male and female sexuality. Nolte and Campbell will play the leads with Bruce Willis appearing in a cameo. Jeremy Northam has been approached to play another lead part and John Cusack for a cameo role. Florian Ballhaus, son of award-winning German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, will serve as DoP.

Financing for the project is being shared 50:50 by German and US partners, with Gemini receiving backing from German media fund ApolloMedia which also co-produced Gemini TV movie Thou Shalt Not Kill. Nick Nolte's own production company Kingsgate and Jana Edelbaum's Janus Films are the US co-producers. Talks are underway with France's UGC and United Artists Films to handle international sales.

'This independent film's financing sees the actors working for minimum fees and deferments with participation on the back end, " said Gemini co-chairman Peter Paulich who is coordinating the company's move into international features.

Gemini is also producing Bluff, which reunites Paulich with Barracuda director Philippe Haim and producer Stephane Tavernas. Samy Naceri, Olivia Bonamie and Jose Garcia are set to star in the $11m (FFr75m) French-language action comedy which is being co-produced with Tavernas' Horizon Productions and has already received production support from Filmstiftung NRW. UGC is handling international sales.

Gemini will also partner Copenhagen/Los Angeles-based Alien Productions on Nils Grabol's Riga, starring Ulrich Thomsen in a love story between a young sailor and a Latvian woman after the end of Communism. The Danish Film Institute and Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg are backing the $3.7m (DM7.5m) project, penned by UK author Ray Villis. Principle photography on the project is set to start at locations in Berlin and Poland from July.

Meanwhile Gemini has sold remake rights to Otto Alexander Jahrreis' comedy All About Bob, produced two years ago by Gemini, Alien Productions and Wega-Film, to Ridley Scott's production outfit Scott Free.