“I knew the movie had to have a flat-earther in it,” director Lynn Shelton says. Credit: Barbara Kinney

“I knew the movie had to have a flat-earther in it,” director Lynn Shelton says.

“I knew the movie had to have a flat-earther in it,” director Lynn Shelton says. Barbara Kinney

Lynn Shelton is the first local filmmaker to open the Seattle International Film Festival twice. Her last film to kick off SIFF, Your Sister’s Sister, back in 2012, starred Emily Blunt and was set in the San Juan Islands. Shelton is probably best known for 2009’s Humpday, starring Mark Duplass, or 2014’s Laggies with Kiera Knightley and Sam Rockwell—both films set in Seattle. Her latest, Sword of Trust, starring Marc Maron, is her first set outside Washington State. She shot it in Birmingham, Alabama, in a mere two weeks. Maron (who Shelton has also directed on the Netflix show Glow) will be in attendance at the SIFF kickoff screening.

Sword of Trust feels very now. It’s clearly a movie that was made while Trump was the president. Was that in the back of your mind?

I mean, how could it not be? He’s always there. He’s taken over our lives. But I definitely didn’t set out to “make a movie that was relevant.” I really didn’t! It just sort of happened that way.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...