The annual Cannes Film Festival launched its 12-day program yesterday with an typically grim opening selection, Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness,” starring Julianne Moore. The Brazilian film, an English-language adaptation of José Saramago’s novel of the same name, tells the story of a plague of blindness that sweeps the world. Much of the film is set in a derelict asylum outside an unnamed city, where victims of the contagious blindness are quarantined by panicked authorities.

“Blindness” is one of 22 entries in the main competition for the Palme d’Or award for best film. The nine-member jury tasked with choosing the winner is headed by Sean Penn.

South American films joining “Blindness” in the main competition are another Brazilian entry, Walter Salles’s “Line of Passage,” and two Argentine productions: Pablo Trapero’s prison drama, “Leonera,” and Lucrecia Martel’s thriller, “The Headless Woman.” They will compete against Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie, and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” a two-part epic about the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, starring Benicio del Toro. The other two American entries are James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix, and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” with Philip Seymour Hoffman.