It's finally official: Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles and based on the book by José Saramago, will open Cannes. A lot of us who work with film in São Paulo were pretty shocked when the film didn't make the competition lineup as it seemed like a shoe-in, but the possibility of it scoring the coveted opening night slot hadn't even occurred to me!

With the combined pedigree of the director, cast (including Julianne Moore, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal, and Mark Ruffalo), and source material, expectations for this one are high. It's O2 Filmes' biggest production yet and media attention since filming in São Paulo last year has been intense.

For those of you who read Portuguese, Fernando Meirelles has been keeping a blog about his experiences with the movie. I found this part interesting, where he explains that Miramax had reservations about the intensity of the cut he screened for them (translation mine):

"By contract, the final cut is mine, but these guys know what they're talking about and I took advantage of their expertise and my disposition to rethink once again the editing. I thought they were hypersensitive to the scenes of sexual violence and I didn't pay too much attention to their comments. Not one friend in Brazil had mentioned this problem. North Americans are more moralistic, I generalized. But nevertheless, as a good neighbor policy, I decided to lessen a little the film's voltage. A little."

By the way, you can see the movie's oddly-paced (in my opinion) trailer below: