The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) announced Your Sister’s Sister as the opening film to be presented at the 2012 festival’s prestigious Opening Night Gala, Thursday, May 17, 2012.
Your Sister’s Sister, written and directed by Seattle’s Lynn Shelton (Humpday) and starring Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark Duplass, is SIFF’s first opening selection locally produced and shot by a Seattle filmmaker. SIFF takes place May 17 through June 10.
“I am thrilled beyond measure that Your Sister’s Sister has been chosen to open the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival, and that it represents the first locally produced film to ever receive this honor,” said Shelton. “I hope the city will come raise a glass to our incredibly talented crew and to the entire Seattle film community, without which this film would never have been made. After a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and a U.S. premiere at Sundance, our homecoming in May will be the sweetest celebration of them all.”
Spotlighted this year as one of Variety’s ‘10 Directors to Watch,’ Seattle-based Shelton has seen much success in the festival circuit, most recently with the world debut of Your Sister’s Sister in Toronto where it received acquisition by IFC Films. Shelton will also screen the film at Sundance this year, making her first return to the festival as a member of the U.S. Dramatic Competition jury, since her 2009 Humpday breakout.
A year after his brother’s death, Jack (Mark Duplass) still see-saws between emotionally wobbly and outright volatile. When he makes a scene at a memorial party, Iris (Emily Blunt) intervenes with a plan: Jack must oil up his old bike and trek to her father’s cabin on an island on Puget Sound, where isolation will give his brain a chance to detangle. When Jack gets to the woods, however, he finds not solitude but Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), herself nursing a wounded heart and a bottle of tequila. After several shots and some slurred commiseration, liquor isn’t the only fluid these two end up sharing. Their hangover descends in the form of Iris, who pulls up with a bag of groceries the next morning. [TIFF]