Canne film festival 2008 - (1)

The official selection for the 61st edition of the Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25) was unveiled on Wednesday April 23. Total of 22 films will be competing for the most prestigious award given out at Cannes; the Palme d'Or ("Golden Palm") for the best film.

The 61st edition of the super-charged 12-day movie marathon has a strong South American flavor, with two Argentinean and two Brazilian films in the main competition lineup. Also it seems to have many films talk about political and social issues.

The opening will be the apocalyptic 'Blindness'. Will Lawrence talks to its director, Fernando Meirelles. It is a scene of total mayhem in the centre of São Paulo, Brazil's largest city. Fires burn in abandoned oil drums, while crowds of ragged refugees - some clinging onto their few possessions, others aimless - zigzag across the litter-strewn streets, which are ringed by military barricades and barbed wire. Packs of dogs prowl through the garbage, sniffing at the debris before descending on a prone human figure, presumably a corpse, and feasting.

Fernando Meirelles, 52, director of the Oscar-nominated crime drama City of God and the Oscar-winning thriller The Constant Gardener. He is a native of São Paulo and is using parts of the city for his latest film, Blindness, an adaptation of the novel by the Nobel Prize-winning José Saramago. The film stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.

"There are so many ways to understand this story," begins Meirelles as the scene comes to an end and the poor soul playing the corpse is fitted with extra packs of treats to attract the dogs. "First there's the idea of the fragility of civilisation. Just look at this." His arm sweeps out, signalling the chaos that he has unleashed on the streets of his city. "We think civilisation is so solid, but take just one thing away and it all collapses."

The one thing Meirelles and Saramago have taken from humankind - as the title Blindness may suggest - is the ability to see. Saramago's 1995 novel is a harrowing allegory set in an unnamed city where people are gradually, and without apparent reason, robbed of their sight.

The book focuses on a group of the afflicted who are drawn together and, with the government baffled by the problem, sent away to an asylum and placed under heavy guard. More and more inmates arrive until it becomes apparent that the epidemic has swept the world. The whole planet has gone blind, with one exception: one of the primary characters is a doctor (Ruffalo) and his wife (Moore) has retained her sight, guiding the unnamed characters during their confinement and leading their escape into the chaos of the world outside, where gangs of sightless children attack sightless old men, and dogs savage the bodies of the dead and dying.

"It's such a powerful story," says Meirelles, "and actually we have to make the film a little lighter than the book; there is some humour in there, but it's very dark, especially when they are all locked in the asylum. We talk about the same things in the film, the same story, but to shoot it exactly as it was written would be too unbearable to watch. In literature it is easier to go really deep, but if you see it, in can be too much."

Saramago's book is both contemporary and timeless, tackling the human condition head on. "There's also a bit of feminism in the story, because it is the women that do everything," laughs Meirelles. "The men are almost useless. It is the women with their love and their caring nature who make everything better. And some people also see the political aspects of the story and that the only way to build a society is to give up your personal values and work together for the community.

"With everyone blinded and drawn to the same level, they must kill the ego and work together. That's what happens in the asylum. It become a nightmare because each person is only trying to get food for themselves and to survive, but we have this group of people that is working together, like a family, and they are the only ones who can get out and get a better life. It's an allegory."