Cannes packed with A-Listers

Updated 10.55 Thu May 15 2008

Keywords: Julianne Moore, gael garcia, danny glover, blindness, cannes, cannes film festival, eva longoria, cate blanchett, indiana jones, sean penn

A-listers packed into the Cannes Film Festival for the opening film: Fernando Meirelles's apocalyptic drama Blindness.

Actress Julianne Moore said her latest film reflects the "tremendous amount of tragedy" in the world.

Actress Julianne Moore said her latest film reflects the "tremendous amount of tragedy" in the world

The film is based on a book by Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramango, telling the story of humanity in the grip of a mysterious blindness epidemic.

Moore plays the wife of a man who is suddenly struck blind while driving home from work, his world turning into a milky haze.

As the contagion spreads the newly blind victims of the so-called White Sickness are rounded up and quarantined in a mental asylum and Moore pretends she is blind in order to remain with her husband, played by Mark Ruffalo.

Moore said of the film: "There is a tremendous amount of tragedy right now...and we are feeling anxious...I think we're reflecting what we're feeling in our own culture."

Director Fernando Meirelles said: "What attracted me was the idea of civilisation collapsing. I started finding so many layers in the film."