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Blindness, the opening film and the first film in competition, was presented to the press today. Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles was present with cast members Julianne Moore, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Alice Braga, Yoshino Kimura, Yusuke Iseya, and actor/screenwriter Don McKellar.

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.