During the previous Cannes Announcement, there was speculation as to why Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, a very handsomely produced disease/apocalypse drama - 28 Weeks Later without all the gunfire and explosions - was not in the initial offering of Competition films. After all it's a Brazilian/Canadian/Japanese co-production starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Sandra Oh and Gael Garcia Bernal, written by Canadian screenwriter/actor/director Don McKellar and based on Portuguese author José Saramago's Nobel Prize winning novel. What better way to kick off the first big worldwide festival of 2008 than a world-wide arthouse apocalypse yarn? An announcement from the festival group yesterday has indicated that Blindness not only at the festival, but is in fact the kick-off film for the Festival Competition section.
