Antonio Banderas: "With the Popular Party in power, film subsidies will end"

Hollywood star Antonio Banderas has said that the change of government likely to be produced by this Sunday's general election, which the conservative Popular Party is widely predicted to win, will lead to an end of grants for Spanish film production.

"The subsidies are going to be ended by the cuts," said the Spanish actor in Mexico, where he was presenting his new animated feature, Puss in Boots, this week.

"It would be a great surprise if the government that we are going to have after Sunday, which looks imminent unless there is an unusual about-turn, didn't cut the grants to us," he said.

In his opinion, though, the situation will only make those who really want to tell stories "sharper" and search for new ways to do so.

"What I am not going to do is spend time crying about it; if things go another way, I'll look for where I can fit in and, I tell you, I've spent 22 years outside of Spain and in reality I have not benefited from those subsidies in my career because I have mainly worked in Hollywood," said the Los Angeles-based actor.

Faced with such a situation, he added, the process will have to be reinvented, with filmmakers relying on private investment and presales, for example, for financing.

"We have to see where we are and what risk one assumes as a producer and director," he said.

The 51-year-old actor, who lends his voice to the feline lead of Puss in Boots - a spinoff from the highly successful Shrek movies - also spoke about one of his forthcoming projects, an art movie titled Autómata that he will produce and star in.

The film, to be directed by Spaniard Gabe Ibáñez (Hierro), will start shooting next April in English.

"Unfortunately, because that is the way the markets work, it will be filmed in English so it can be financed, because we are basically doing it with international presales and, if we go with Spanish, it is very difficult to reach the right levels," he said.

The film will "reflect on uniqueness" and talk about how "machines advance beyond human conscience and become more human than humans," Banderas revealed.