LA-based production outfit Kudalini Pictures has teamed with pan-European film financing, production and distribution outfit Entera Entertainment to produce Caribbean Candy directed by Fina Torres (Woman On Top, Oriana).

Kundalini is an LA company headed by Dileep Singh Rathore which previously produced Indian festival hit Maya directed by Digvijay Singh in 2001.

Rathore and Emmanuel Pappas will produce the film for Kundalini in 2004, with Entera taking rights in Europe and the US. A sales company will be enlisted to sell remaining territories.

Caribbean Candy is a cat-and-mouse story set in a fishing village in the Caribbean where a detective and a drug lord both end up. It will be shot in Marseilles, France, and in the Caribbean.

The deal between Entera and Kundalini was negotiated by Martin Wiley of Entera with Rathore.

Entera was formed last year by US media entrepreneur Jeff Simmons and former Columbia TriStar distribution executives Tony Manne, Ricardo Avila and Richard Dassonville as a financing and acquisitions entity for distribution in the top five European territories of UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Torres made her feature debut with the Camera d’Or-winning Oriana in 1985, went on to direct Celestial Clockwork in 1993 and most recently made her first English-language film Woman On Top (2000) for Fox Searchlight Pictures which marked the English-language breakthrough for Spanish star Penelope Cruz.