Workers fix the red carpet onto the steps of the Cannes film festival palace, on the eve of the opening of the 61st International film festival in Cannes. (Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press)

The 61st edition of the lavish Cannes International Film Festival officially gets underway Wednesday night with Blindness, the dark Canadian-Japanese-Brazilian co-production based on the acclaimed Jose Saramago novel.

"It's a very strong film, but it is about the disintegration of humanity, and it goes to places where a lot of films don't go," Canadian producer Niv Fichman said of the movie — only the second Canadian film ever to snag the opening-night slot in Cannes (The first was Quebec film Fantastica in 1980).

"Opening night [screenings] are full of dignitaries and people who are not usually cineastes," Fichman told to CBC News from Cannes on Wednesday morning. He admitted that the film is bleak but said he hoped audiences would find the ending redemptive.

Directed by Brazil's Fernando Meirelles with a script laboured on for years by Canadian actor-writer Don McKellar, Blindness is "very faithful" to Portuguese Nobel laureate Saramago's original story about a mysterious epidemic afflicting an unnamed city.

Blindness features a star-studded international cast with a host of Canadians, including Sandra Oh, Susan Coyne and Martha Burns, as well as U.S. actors Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, Mexico's Gael Garcia Bernal and Brazilian actress Alice Braga.

The fact that the movie is "a global, international story with an international cast" likely appealed to the Cannes selection committee, longtime Maclean's magazine film critic Brian D. Johnson told CBC News on Wednesday morning.

"For us at Cannes who've been coming for many years, it's really welcome to see a serious film open [the festival]," he added.

"We've been so accustomed to seeing a lot of fluff, or confections or French pastries open Cannes. We had The Da Vinci Code a couple of years ago and that's more typcial of what we usually see on opening night."

Because of this, "I think people are predisposed to like the film," Johnson said. "Everybody respects the level of difficulty in adapting a novel like this, that has all kinds of shifting points of view."

Blindness will face off for the festival's top honour — the Palme d'Or — against another Canadian entry: the drama Adoration by Cannes favourite Atom Egoyan.

Recent films from top directors such as Wim Wenders (The Palermo Shooting), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Le Silence De Lorna), Stephen Soderbergh (Che), Walter Salles (Linha De Passe) and Clint Eastwood (The Changeling) will also vie for the prestigious trophy.

U.S. actor Sean Penn presides over the Cannes jury that will select the winner. Stars expected to touch down in the city include Angelina Jolie, Harrison Ford, Woody Allen, Penelope Cruz, Madonna, Sharon Stone and Robert De Niro.

Online voting determines NFB winner

High-profile films set to screen out of competition on the Croisette during the 12-day festival include Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and the animated comedy Kung-Fu Panda.

The National Film Board of Canada's annual short film contest at Cannes has nine finalists hailing from North America and Europe:

• About love, hate and the other one, Tobias Bilgeri (Germany).
• Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign), Alonso Alvarez (Mexico/U.S.).
• Victor Gazon, Patrick Gazé (Canada).
• Papiroflexia,Joaquin Baldwin (U.S.).
• Raging Ball, Nicolas Duval (France).
• Struck, Taron Lexton (U.S.A).
• Lectia de Box (The Boxing Lesson), Alexandru Mavrodineanu (Romania).
• The Execution of Solomon Harris, Ed Yonaitis (U.S.A).
• Balbezit (Ball Possession), Willemiek Kluijfhout (the Netherlands).

Now in its fourth year, and co-organized with YouTube and the festival's Short Film Corner, the competition is decided by online public voting on the NFB website or YouTube.

Two other Canadian shorts will also be showcased in Cannes at the parallel International Critics' Week event: Next Floor, directed by Denis Villeneuve, and Ondée, from writer-director David Coquard-Dassault.

The festival runs through May 25.

With files from the Canadian Press