Kristen celebrating New Years Eve with friends in Los Angeles - 31 December 2025

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Scans: Kristen and Jesse Eisenberg for Variety's Directors on Directors

 

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As featured in the print version of Variety December 2025. The full video interview will be released on 6 January 2026.

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Kristen will be featured on Variety's Directors on Directors series with Jesse Eisenberg - 6 January 2026

 

Variety’s Directors on Directors, presented by Klimon, returns on Jan. 5 with the visionaries behind some of this year’s biggest awards contenders.

Featured in this year’s Directors on Directors lineup are:  

• Guillermo del Toro (“Frankenstein”) & Bradley Cooper (“Is This Thing On?”)  
• Kristen Stewart (“The Chronology of Water”) & Jesse Eisenberg (“A Real Pain”)  
• Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”) & Spike Lee (“Highest 2 Lowest”)  
• Chloé Zhao (“Hamnet”) & Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”)   

“Coming off our biggest Actors on Actors ever, these Directors on Directors conversations will continue to surprise and engage film fans around the world,” said Variety’s co-president and co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. “The best way to kick off awards season in 2026 is through our latest video series.” 

The conversations will be released from Jan. 5-8 across Variety.com and its social media channels. The Directors on Directors print issue comes out on Dec. 31.   

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Kristen attends the Neon Holiday Party in Los Angeles - December 2025

 

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Kristen talks to W Magazine about 'The Chronology of Water'

The first time Kristen Stewart read The Chronology of Water, she thought, “Goddamnit, that’s what a movie should do. That’s why you make your first movie,” she tells W. That was nearly ten years ago—the book, a searing memoir of abuse and recovery by Lidia Yuknavitch, came out in 2011—and in the meantime, Stewart starred in over a dozen films, received Academy and Golden Globe nominations for her portrayal of Princess Diana in Spencer, and married the love of her life, screenwriter Dylan Meyer.

But all the while, the actor, beloved for her role in Twilight, kept Yuknavitch’s book in mind, writing her own adaptation for the screen. After securing funding and casting Imogen Poots in the lead role, Stewart made her film. And this past May, she debuted her adaptation of The Chronology of Water at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Un Certain Regard Award and Camera d’Or for first-time feature filmmakers.

“It’s about being allowed to say something,” Stewart says about making the film, currently in theaters in New York and Los Angeles with a wider release on January 9, 2026. Below, she talks directing her first feature, women reclaiming their stories, and the next three movies she has her sights on.

Why did it feel important to tell this story now?

It’s a tough movie to make, because it sounds like a story you’ve heard before and don’t need to be dragged through again. “Woman flees abusive home and through swimming and art finds salvation after substance abuse.”

But the reason the book is so enlightening is that it focuses on how people see things and not what they see. Even though it’s a memoir and it’s hyperspecific about one woman, it’s about breaking form, and repossessing the terms and the words that have defined you and your worth for your whole fucking life. Women were really only allowed to be educated very recently, so those words weren’t created by us.

The movie took a long time to get funding and get made—eight years, you’ve said.

It was a really hard fucking sell. It was so much more difficult to read the script than it was to have incredibly striking, searing images embedded into your body that you’re never going to forget. It was easier to make the movie and show it to people than to get people to pay me millions of dollars to do so.

Did you have visual references?

I had such a visual experience with the book, and my references substantiated those instincts. But they did come from the inside. I mean, I love Lynne Ramsay, Tarkovsky. I love experimental film. I love Barbara Hammer.

But also, just having a little bit of faith in your own dreams—this is so pretentious, but you see shit when you close your eyes. That’s like watching a movie. It’s a meta thing because the movie is about not doubting yourself and allowing your own narrative to self-formulate and not be knocked off its path. That’s the crux of the tension in the movie: It's not what her dad does, it’s not what the husband does, it’s not the baby. It’s like, is she going to be able to finish the sentence? Are we going to get the book that we’re experiencing, or is she going to fuck it up? Is she going to write herself into being or is she going to doubt herself again?

You’ve spent much of your career in front of the camera. What was it like to not only step behind the lens but also to manage the whole production?

It’s important to dispel this mythology surrounding the authoritarianism of a director. Nobody can do everything by themselves. A good crew is so connected that there’s no hierarchy. The coolest thing about directing is being the kickstarter. I’ve been around directors on set, and I’ve seen this drive manifest in a look in their eye that just is like, “Holy shit, they’re unstoppable. I want to go where they're going.” It makes you want to prove that you figured out how to want it as bad. I’ve done that as an actress since I was fucking nine years old. The coolest part about being on the other side is being this conjurer. You get to get everyone going.

Is this the first of many films you’ll be directing?

Oh my god, yeah. I’m dying [to direct more]. I’m attached to some incredible projects as an actor, too, that have taken a long time to find themselves. [Directing] is such a huge responsibility, and it’s so scary, but I feel a gnawing in the other direction. I love being an actor, and I can’t wait or whatever the fuck, but I’m writing three movies, and I want to make them yesterday.

Do those movies share any themes?

I’m so fucking disinterested in watching people do things. I hate pedantic filmmaking. I hate the morality of the three-act structure. It’s crazy how we keep watching the same movie over and over, and just how chained-up they all feel. I want to make a big, huge experimental film, but I want it to be hyper-commercial.

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Kristen attends a post-screening Q&A for 'The Chronology of Water' and after-party in LA - 18 December 2025

 

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Video: Kristen and Thora Birch at a post-screening Q&A for 'The Chronology of Water in Los Angeles

 

Video: Kristen and Imogen Poots for 'The Chronology of Water' with Beyond the Fame

 

Kristen's interview for 'The Chronology of Water' with FilmInk (Australia)

 

If ever there was a perfect topic for former child star Kristen Stewart, 35, to choose as her directorial debut, it would be Lidia Yuknavitch’s poignant memoir The Chronology of Water.

“This book is much more about form and breaking away from prescribed shapes, success story shapes, failure shapes,” says the actress who speaks from the heart, reflecting on a career encompassing her breakthrough role with Jodie Foster in The Panic Room – when she was just 12 year old – through to blockbusters such as the Twilight franchise.

“And then there’s different parts of your life that sort of speak shame into your body and to then kind of metabolize that and speak out something positive is what good writing can do for you,” says Stewart whose relationship with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson would thrust her into an uncomfortable public spotlight for many years.

All of which led the Oscar-nominated actress to be drawn to more complex, introspective roles, such as Seberg, Underwater and Spencer, portraying the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

Given Stewart’s artistic trajectory, understandably The Chronology of Water would speak to her when she first read it in 2017. “From the very first page, I felt its electric current – this jagged, nonlinear journey through trauma and memory was unlike anything I’d ever read.

“After 40 pages, I had such a physical reaction that I put the book down, grabbed my phone, and told my team, ‘I need to speak to the person who wrote this.’

“What drew me in was its fragmentation: Yuknavitch does not give you a tidy narrative but instead hands you the pieces of a life in shards, demanding you to assemble them yourself. That act of reconstruction – of watching a story break and then choosing to stitch it back together – became the beating heart of why I knew this had to be my first film,” she says of Yuknavitch’s memoir outlining her abusive childhood followed by an escape into competitive swimming, sexual experimentation, toxic relationships, and addiction before finding her voice through writing.

“I love Lidia and, in a way, it became a sacred text for me overnight. There are voices that help you find yours. Art should lead to multiplicity, and this one in particular is about perspective and the body in a way that felt so personal and physical.

“Over eight years, I wrote and rewrote – I overwrote the shit out of it, made 500 versions, sculpting a script that could be as ephemeral and neurological as memory itself. At its core, The Chronology of Water is an invitation: to witness ugliness, to sit with shame, and emerge knowing your body and your story belong to you. It’s an invitation to stop hiding.

“The female experience is a big huge secret. We are told to keep most everything to ourselves from birth. Telling secrets is fun. I wanted this movie to feel like a game of hot potato. Too hot to touch. I wanted a film that pulses with immediacy – quick cuts, immersive sound, a visceral rhythm that mirrors how memory really works – and to remind every person in the theater that your narrative is yours to rewrite,” she says passionately.

Her fighting words were matched equally by Imogen Poots whom she cast as Lidia, offering up a ferocious tour-de-force performance.

Ask Stewart why she was compelled to make her directorial debut, she says, “My favourite part of acting is always the shared contagion of what an emotion can be.  And my favourite directors are people who can express themselves and who have something to say and have cool perspectives, but primarily share space with you and create environments that we can all sprawl and discover and thrive in.

“I wanted to design my own process and see how it went. And this felt like the perfect piece to rip off the band-aid with,” she says of her emotionally raw film, co-produced by her long-time love and now wife, screenwriter Dylan Meyer.

“I had a blast, but it was really hard. I felt the technical limitations of structure and process and time and being the person who’s supposed to control that, delineation of responsibility and how to protect chaos.

“But then also allow Imogen to be free and easy and safe and like, be down to jump in the pool without me trying to control everything too much, ” says Stewart who believes her work as an actress enabled her to take this new step behind the camera.

“These two jobs really are partners for me. She helped me direct this movie. She helped me write this movie,” Stewart says about Poots.

“I think I helped her act this movie. And when I say act, I mean live. We were both living this movie every day.  It was her body, but our fucking souls were like, totally combined. And the reason I want to keep making films both in front of and behind the camera, they’re very much driven by the same impulses,” she says.

Throughout her career, Stewart has never been easy on herself – constantly questioning and exploring whilst acutely understanding that she comes from a position of privilege.

“Whether or not you’ve been dealt a tough deck, we live in a global society that is not the nicest or not the most equal to everyone that lives here.

“And if you’ve had a fully privileged path that has kind of diluted you into thinking that you’re totally content – I mean, for me, that must consist of a sort of unawareness of the world that we’re living in.

“Even if you’re not somebody who’s dealt with overt trauma, abuse, some of the things that this movie deals with, step away from that, but just be like: Can a happy life lead to curiosity, depth, things like that? Or do you need to go through hardship to the other side of adversity in order to feel like you’ve earned your happiness basically?” she argues.

“I mean, you’d have to be super unaware of the fact that a lot of people don’t have it as good as you. And that’s hard to live with.”

And whether or not you buy into the notion that money equals happiness, Stewart isn’t having it – arguing that most women who have lived through the ‘90s or early 2000s and – even right now – can speak to a certain victimhood.

“Whether or not we’ve had our asses handed to us in a literal way that we could speak to as victims, there’s a victimization of oppressed voices and that is 50 percent of the population. And it’s not exclusive to, but it is definitely something that the movie speaks to, which is to raise your hand in class doesn’t feel the same for us as it does for a lot of people.

“There are voices [in the film] – the father’s voice, God’s voice, the therapist’s voice, they’re all the patriarchy. We weren’t designed to help ourselves or each other. We were designed to be possessed by men and told how to be sweet and be happy. And so, just the fact of all of that is crushing.”

Stewart believes that men might benefit from seeing her film.

“I’ve had so many men that I love and respect watch this film and go, ‘Ooh, fuck. I mean, this was just really tough. This was so hard.’ I’m like, ‘that’s right. Was it hard for you? I’m glad it was hard for you because it’s been really hard for us.’

“The question of the darkness in the film, how hard it was to get made, all of that speaks to the fact that we were really lucky in our privileged lives with our nice families, but at the same time, in order to actually excavate some of our friends and our loved ones’ experiences and voices, it was really hard to get this movie made,” she says.

She understands her movie isn’t easy to watch – although it’s also hard to turn away: “It’s almost like you want to lifeboat out of the movie or something, which I understand, but we also want lifeboats out of this movie, which is why we made it.”

The Chronology of Water will be released in 2026.

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