Opening Film, also in Competition: “Blindness” by Fernando Meirelles

Blindness, by Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, has been chosen as the opening film of the Cannes Festival. An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago, this political and philosophical thriller is the first film competing for the 61st Golden Palm award. Six years after the out-of-competition presentation of City of God, director Meirelles is back in Cannes with a drama about an epidemic with devastating consequences. The victims of "white blindness," a contagion caused by a mysterious virus, are quarantined in a disused hospital. There, a doctor’s wife attempts to organize some semblance of a daily life, but she soon finds herself leading an improvised rebellion.