It was confirmed today that Fernando Meirelles' sci-fi drama Blindness will open this year's Cannes Film Festival. The project stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, and Gael Garcia Bernal. While it may seem odd to open Cannes with a genre flick (albeit based on an acclaimed novel) that doesn't feature any BIG movie stars, this selection can hopefully speak to the film's qualities rather than its quantity of celebrities. After all, the last two Cannes openers, The Da Vinci Code and My Blueberry Nights, were heavy on celebs but lacking in critical support. Besides, after watching the film's first trailer (embedded below), it looks like a film worth seeing:

Oh, and in cool trivia news: this adaptation of Blindess was written by popular Canadian actor/filmmaker Don McKellar. Besides his own directorial debut, Childstar, he also co-wrote the screenplays for The Red Violin, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, and the almost-forgotten-but-needs-to-be-revisited Highway 61.

Blindness is one of my favorite novels. It's a challenging read (no quote marks and no paragraph breaks) but the plot is interesting and the characters well driven. Saramago is a genius.

Actually, wasn't McKellar's directorial debut the apocalypse drama Last Night?

I lurve "Highway 61." Nothing like Satan in his burning room of soul Polaroids.