PARIS: In most movie theaters the lights go dark and the feature begins, but for an audience attending a Paris film festival under way this month, the whole world is dark and stays that way.

The Audiovision Film Festival, which began this week and runs to April 14, is unusual in that it caters to the blind and visually impaired.

Movies are screened as normal on the big screen. But in the theater in a southern Paris district hosting the festival, the audience is wearing headphones hooked into a local network to hear blow-by-blow synchronized descriptions of the action happening before their un- or poor-seeing eyes.

“A pterodactyl swoops from the sky and pecks Edouard on the head,” narrates a voice in echo of a scene from the opening film shown on Wednesday: A new French animation comedy making light of prehistoric evolution, titled “Pourquoi j’ai pas mangé mon père” (Why I didn’t eat my father).