TORONTO - Canadian film producer Niv Fichman is surprisingly calm as he prepares to jet to Cannes to watch his movie, "Blindness," kick off the world's most glamorous film festival.
The movie, a Canadian-Japanese-Brazilian co-production starring Hollywood A-listers Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore, is opening Cannes on Wednesday night. It's only the second movie with a solid Canadian pedigree to earn that distinction; the Quebec dud "Fantastica" opened the festival 28 years ago to widespread jeers.
Fichman doesn't deny he's nervous about how the apocalyptic film about a blindness epidemic that strikes an unnamed city might go over in a place where audiences aren't shy about expressing their disdain.
"The film is definitely going to raise eyebrows because the book did and it's very faithful to the book, and this is the country, after all, where they threw tomatoes at the premiere of 'The Rite of Spring,' so it's going to be really interesting," Fichman said with a laugh, referring to riots that erupted when Igor Stravinsky's famous pagan ballet came to Paris in 1913.
Fichman says he's not too concerned that "Blindness," directed by Brazil's Fernando Meirelles, will have a premiere as disastrous as that of "Fantastico," or spark civil unrest among audience members - but he fears the tale's bleakness might leave people glum.
"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 ... it takes you to a place where it's maybe uncomfortable to go in a way that I think that is pretty unusual in cinema."
Fichman co-founded Toronto's Rhombus Media in 1979 with two friends, and is now one of Canada's most respected and celebrated producers.
He's been behind award-winning movies like "Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould," "Silk" and "Snowcake" as well as TV shows including "Slings and Arrows," which Meirelles is going to adapt and broadcast in Brazil after Fichman sent him the first season on DVD.
Among all the other films at Cannes, "Blindness," based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel of the same name by Portuguese author Jose Saramago, is competing against another Canadian movie, Atom Egoyan's "Adoration," for the Palme d'Or.
Fichman, Egoyan and "Blindness" screenwriter Don McKellar have been friends for years and are cheering for each other at Cannes.
"Atom and I had lunch the other day," Fichman said. "We had two glasses of champagne together and toasted one another's success at the festival. Atom goes way back with that festival; I know every story of his through all the years he's been associated with it."
That's why he was prepared, Fichman says, for the endless hours of logistical planning that ensued as soon as "Blindness" was selected for Cannes's opening night.
"It's only been 10 days or so since it was chosen, but ever since then, it's been tens of thousands of phone calls about prints being ready and French subtitles and who's going to which screening and what company gets how many tickets to what party and who gets invited to which dinner. That's my job at this point, unfortunately - it's kind of hilarious."
