  Foreign films coming to Springfield Art Association announces festival lineup Voir Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime et Auf Der Anderen Seite à Springfield. Translation: See I’ve Loved You So Long and The Edge of Heaven in Springfield.
The closing of Kerasotes’ White Oaks Cinema last September was the most recent of several blows to independent and foreign cinema in Springfield. As venues for more obscure movies dwindle, The Springfield Art Association is set to present its 18th annual film festival. The SAA has secured the rights to screen some of the best recent films from around the world, which include official selections from the Cannes, Toronto, Tribeca, Telluride, Sundance and New York film festivals. Six foreign features will be screened between Jan. 11 and March 24. The festival begins with Tell No One, the French adaptation of Harlan Coben’s best-selling thriller, in which American audiences will recognize actress Kristin Scott Thomas.
Thomas makes a second festival appearance in the Golden Globe-nominated I’ve Loved You So Long, an adult melodrama about a woman’s struggle for redemption after being released from prison. The movie was a huge success in France and is expected to contend for several awards-season honors.
The Edge of Heaven is a Turkish-German film written and directed by Fatih Akin, and will run in February. It takes place in both countries and examines the relationship between an aging widower and a prostitute.
Four other complex characters join the tragic story, which Variety calls an “utterly assured, profoundly moving… superbly cast drama.”
The lone documentary in this year’s fest is Man on Wire, which tells the story of Philippe Petit’s illegal 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
The nonfiction work became the sixth film in festival history to win both the Grand Jury Prize and an Audience Award at Sundance.
Son of A Lion, directed by an Australian but cast with non-professional Pakistanis, tells the story of a Pashtun boy who wants to trade life in his father’s weapons workshop for days at school. Set on the Afghan border, the movie was co-written by local villagers that director Benjamin Gilmour (a paramedic by trade) met during a visit in August of 2001, days before 9/11. Gilmour decided to make the movie  
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