FILM · 2008 · BRAZIL
Blindness
16 archived facts 2 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (16)
- #001
José Saramago, the author of the novel on which the film is based, wanted to attend the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. His doctors would not allow him to travel, so Fernando Meirelles flew to Lisbon, Portugal, to show him the film. Saramago was extremely excited about the film. He later cried and told Meirelles that watching it made him as happy as the day he finished the book.
- #002
To prepare for the film, actors, actresses, extras and crew took part in "blind camps." They were blindfolded, driven in a car to an unknown location and left in the middle of the street. However, there was always someone to guide them. Even so, director Fernando Meirelles claimed that someone would always break.
- #003
As in the novel, no character in the film is named.
- #004
Producer Niv Fichman became interested in the project in 1999, when he and Don McKellar, who would write the screenplay, flew to the Canary Islands to talk with Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago about granting the film rights to his book. One of Saramago's conditions was that the film not be shot in any recognizable country.
- #005
Saramago asked that the film not depict any particular country. The film was shot in São Paulo and Osasco, Brazil; Guelph, Ontario, Canada; and Montevideo, Uruguay.
- #006
Many images in the film are taken directly from paintings by Lucian Freud. These include the naked woman lying face down on a bed in the mental hospital, as well as the man lying on his back with his arm over his face and a whip beside him.
- #007
It was chosen as the opening film of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
- #008
In addition to cutting her hair, Julianne Moore dyed her distinctive red hair blonde for the film. This bothered her a great deal because people showed so much interest in the new color.
- #009
The screenplay for this film appeared on the 2007 Black List, the list of the year's "most liked" unproduced screenplays.
- #010
When the Man with the Black Eye Patch first listens to the radio, the speaker is speaking Portuguese, as the original novel was written.
- #011
Yûsuke Iseya wrote part of the Japanese dialogue.
- #012
Agnosia (from the Greek gnosis, "not knowing") is the loss of the ability to recognize objects, faces, sounds or places. It is a rare condition affecting one (or more) senses.
- #013
The music video for Mexican singer and songwriter Aleks Syntek's 2007 song "Intocable" ("Untouchable") was also adapted from José Saramago's novel Blindness.
- #014
This is the last film adaptation of a work by José Saramago to be released during the author's lifetime. Shooting on Embargo (2010) was completed in 2009, but it did not premiere until several months after Saramago's death in June 2010.
- #015
Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo played lovers in The Kids Are All Right (2010).
- #016
In the early stages of the project, actress Fernanda Torres was considered for the lead role.
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