The country’s largest film festival is even bigger this year with 273 features, tributes to Sissy Spacek and director William Friedkin, and the latest from Lynn Shelton and Mark Duplass. Tackling the fest each year is something of a personal challenge—I mean, how do you truly narrow down 273 full-length films and 187 shorts into a top 10 list? You don’t. That’s not the fun of it. Instead, we’ll be watching a lot of movies, and will give you a pick a day throughout the festival, which runs May 17–June 10.

Here are a few to start off:

Your Sister’s Sister
Opening night film, May 17, McCaw Hall

Mark Duplass has a special bond with Seattle director Lynn Shelton, forged when he dropped his guard—and pants—in their acclaimed 2009 mumblecore film Humpday. “We’re like Tango and Cash,” he joked to The Hollywood Reporter. They share a love of improvisation, which is a huge reason their new collaboration, Your Sister’s Sister, is so likable. Stick Duplass, Emily Blunt, and Rosemarie DeWitt in a secluded home in the San Juan Islands, shoot the entire film in a 12-day binge, and you get an honest, hilarious, slightly twisted romance that doesn’t follow any rules. Just the way they like it.

Grassroots
Closing night film, June 10, SIFF Cinema Uptown

We’ve been following the making of this movie ever since director Stephen Gyllenhaal and his crew set up shop on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2010. We endured flying couch cushions to interview Joel David Moore and Jason Biggs about playing Seattle City Council hopeful/monorail champion Grant Cogswell and his campaign manager Phil Campbell. We even interviewed Cogswell himself, aka ‘the man who loved Seattle too much.’ And now, after waiting patiently, we’ll finally see Seattle’s most quixotic City Council race as a Hollywood movie. It makes its world premiere to close out SIFF.

Safety Not Guaranteed
May 23 at 7, May 25 at 4:30, SIFF Cinema Uptown

It started as an ad in Backwoods Home magazine in 1997: “Wanted. Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke.” A few Seattle magazine writers decided to follow the story, and that story has become a hit 2012 Sundance comedy starring Parks and Rec’s Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass (the man is everywhere right now). FilmDistrict secured the rights to this film for a little over $1 million after Sundance, but Seattle gets to see it before its wide release.

Moonrise Kingdom
June 5 at 7, Egyptian Theatre

The latest Wes Anderson film—starring familiar faces Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, and Edward Norton—will open Cannes on May 16, then screens here (woo!) before its wide local release on May 25 June 22. With the help of cowriter Roman Coppola, Anderson has penned what looks to be another quirk-filled escapade about a pair of 12-year-olds in love who’ve run away from their cozy New England homes.

SIFF 2012’s full lineup and schedule of events is slated to go live today, May 3, at siff.net. Tickets are available online and by calling 206-324-9996.

Seattle International Film Festival 2012
May 17–June 10, various venues