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Variety
Kristen Stewart is speaking out against the barriers that exist when it comes to directing films, calling it a “bullshit fallacy” that you need “experience or technical adeptness” in order to do the job. Stewart is at Cannes Film Festival with her feature directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” which premieres in the Un Certain Regard section on Friday night.
Before the premiere, Stewart participated in a fireside chat for the nonprofit Breaking Through the Lens — moderated by Variety‘s Angelique Jackson — alongside Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon, who also has a role in “The Chronology of Water.” Breaking Through the Lens advocates for gender equality in film by providing critical support during the financing stage.
“There’s this bullshit fallacy that you need to have experience or sort of like technical adeptness, and it’s safeguarding the business. It’s a real male perspective,” Stewart said during the conversation at Hyde Beach by Campari. “Like, as if it’s this difficult thing to do. Anyone can make a movie if they have something to say.”
Stewart, who has been open about her struggles to get “The Chronology of Water” financed, said the most difficult thing about making films is finding funding and “having the commitment, because it’s a long-term investment time-wise.” Stewart noted that she “promptly evaded America, that son of a bitch” to make her movie, which was filmed in Latvia and Malta.
“But there’s no amount of learning or skill, like that’s just crap,” she continued. “If you can just feel allowed to communicate and therefore get in touch with something that wants to come out, a film will come out of you. It shouldn’t have taken so long … And I can’t wait for the next one.”
“The Chronology of Water” is a biographical drama based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir of the same name. Imogen Poots stars as Yuknavitch over four decades as she “finds her voice through the written word and her salvation as a swimmer – ultimately becoming a triumphant teacher, mother and a singular modern writer,” according to the film’s synopsis.
When asked about casting Poots in the lead role instead of herself, Stewart said that she “would love to be in a movie that I directed and I will be soon,” but that she was ultimately “not right for the part.”
“Everyone’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do it and what about [Poots], why?’ She doesn’t have like big tits or anything, but she seems like she does,” Stewart said, eliciting a huge laugh from the room. “She has big tit energy. It’s like big dick energy — she has BTE. I was like, I just feel like you have these big tits and you just have to play this part.”
Gordon also spoke about her experience working with Stewart as a director, saying that she “sort of spoke to the musician in me.”
“Like she said, ‘Say it from this part of your body’ and I totally knew what she meant,” Gordon said, gesturing to her gut. “The movie itself is so epically physical, like Imogen’s body is the movie. And then the editing is so fluid.”
At one point, Stewart got choked up thinking about a specific part in the film where Gordon’s character tells Poots’ Lidia that she’s proud of her. “When she says ‘I am proud of you’ to our girl, I mean like it kills me,” Stewart said. “And so I needed somebody that I wanted to hear that from, say it.” As the crowd reacted in a chorus of “aw”s, Gordon patted Stewart on the back supportively.
In addition to Gordon’s presence, the music that plays in the film is also an important aspect. Stewart said she personally wrote Fiona Apple a letter to be able to use two of her songs in the movie. Recalling her nerves over reaching out, Stewart said, “My hands are shaking!” before adding: “It worked and she wrote me a letter back.”
Stewart also shared that Sofia Coppola and Rose Glass, who are thanked at the end of the film, gave her notes on the script, which she penned over the course of eight years (Stewart shares co-writing credit with Andy Mingo). “It’s really hard to read other people’s scripts, people are busy and this was definitely not a traditional read,” she said. “And they’re both filmmakers that I covet. They listened when it was really hard to get people to listen.”
Reflecting on the advice she’d give to other women filmmakers, Stewart urged the audience to never stop asking “why.”
“If anyone’s ever like, ‘Oh, we do it this way. This is just the way we do it’ — why? And I’m not saying like, ‘No. I want to do everything how I want!’ It’s not about that. It’s about understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing instead of just accepting procedure,” she said. “Like, you want to make the same movie over and over? Stop asking why. And dude, fucking people lie to you! I cannot tell you the amount of bullshit deadlines. ‘Oh, you have to get that done by tomorrow.’ I’m like, ‘Mhm.'”
As for getting “The Chronology of Water” into Cannes, Stewart admitted, “We’re like, barely here right now.”
“I slipped this under a closed door, like I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s a super vulnerable experience, but I really wouldn’t design it any other way.”
WWD
Stewart, no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival, has returned with her directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water.” She also co-wrote the screenplay, which is based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 bestselling memoir.
When reading the book, Stewart said she knew by page 40 that she wanted to adapt it into a film. She began discussing the project in 2018—long before any of the production elements were in place.
“I tend to jump the gun and say things too early and share quickly,” she said, acknowledging that many films can take nearly a decade to complete. Stewart recognized early on that the project would be a difficult sell in today’s market. It’s “plot defiant,” she noted, and spans four decades. Still, she’s glad she took her time assembling the right team and striking the right tone.
Despite its unconventional structure, the film touches on themes of Olympic ambition, abuse, addiction, and bisexuality. Imogen Poots is Stewart’s star.
“It’s about orienting yourself in relation to your memories, and allowing that reorientation to be what defines you, and not the facts, not the things that happen to you,” Stewart explained. The film, she said, is about framing your own truth.
While the project may not be commercially driven, it addresses the often-hidden experiences of women, including both pleasure and pain.
Amid recent discussions around U.S. tariffs on films shot abroad, Stewart said budget constraints made it necessary to film in Europe.
“I did have to sort of throw a temper tantrum in order to get this done,” she admitted. Ultimately, the film was shot in Latvia on a modest budget.
Stewart was speaking at Breaking Through the Lens, a nonprofit established in 2018 to create funding opportunities for marginalized filmmakers. The group was formed after 82 female actors and directors stood on the steps of the Palais des Festivals to protest gender-based discrimination in the industry.
Reflecting on the film’s perspective, Stewart said it stems from a voice often underrepresented in cinema.
“It seems like difficult material because it’s full of secrets, because women have just been forced to hide everything that hurts, everything that feels good, pain and pleasure,” she said. Women’s stories deserve to be told, she added, and there should be nothing “crude” about subjects like menstruation and childbirth.
“The blood in our movie, it doesn’t come from wounds, it’s orifice sourced,” she said, dropping a few F-bombs and some descriptive words in the process. “It’s really important to feel comfortable and kind of proud of saying that, and not like, ‘Oh, did I just say something that’s gonna be put in a headline?’ Yes, absolutely. Put it in a headline, I’d love that.
“Imogen was just the only person that could play this part,” Stewart said. “She doesn’t have, like, big tits or anything, but she seems like she does. I’m like, she has ‘big tit energy.’ Like ‘big dick energy’ – BDE. She has BTE. I was like, you don’t, but somehow, I feel like you have big tits and you have to play this part.”
Stewart criticized the longstanding belief that directors must “pay their dues” or accumulate years of experience, calling it a male-driven standard.
“[It’s] a bulls—t fallacy… It’s a real male perspective, as if it’s this difficult thing to do. Anyone can make a movie if they have something to say,” she said.
“The Chronology of Water” was a late addition to the festival, selected for the Un Certain Regard lineup just two weeks before the event began. Submitting the film was “a super vulnerable experience” for Stewart as a first-time director. She encouraged other women to take similar creative risks and trust their instincts.
“If you’ve got a sneaking suspicion, it’s not sneaky. You’ve just been told to shut the f—k up for too long. It’s like, listen to yourself,” she said.
Stewart said she plans to direct another film and hopes to star in it as well. That, she added, will happen “soon.”
Elle
Beneath the blazing Côte d’Azur sun, on a terrace as red as her conviction, Kristen Stewart lit a match under the old rules of filmmaking. Ahead of the Cannes premiere of her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water - an uncompromising adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s cult memoir - Stewart explained why she refused to cast a big-name star or take the lead herself to secure financing, instead opting for English actress Imogen Poots.
‘Everyone’s like, “Why didn’t you do it? And what about [Poots], why?” She doesn’t have big tits or anything, but she seems like she does,’ she deadpans at Campari’s beachfront location. ‘She has Big Tit Energy. It’s like Big Dick Energy - she has BTE. I was like, I just feel like you have these big tits and you just have to play this part.
‘The list of women and men that can finance a movie in the entertainment industry are so beyond me. They change quickly, and I don’t understand them at all. There’s just no way to make something with a face or a voice without making truly intrinsic decisions based on instinct.’
Speaking at the galvanising event with Breaking Through The Lens - a global nonprofit creating pathways to finance for women, LGBTQIA+, and other marginalised filmmakers - Stewart was quizzed on announcing her intention to direct the film back in 2018.
‘I probably shouldn’t have said it out loud in 2018,’ she laughs, remembering her Cannes promise. ‘But thank God I stamped my feet - without that public tantrum, it wouldn’t have happened.’
For years, the project languished in development purgatory: too bold, too messy, too uncompromising for typical financiers. ‘I won’t make a f*cking-nother movie until I make this movie,’ she has warned in the most Kristen Stewart way possible.
A film carved from instinct rather than market trends, The Chronology of Water is, as Stewart described it, ‘difficult… full of secrets, because women have been forced to hide everything that hurts—and everything that feels good.’
Based on Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water is a sensory cannonball into the life of a woman shattered - and then remade - by trauma, grief, addiction, and the radical act of reinvention. It traces Yuknavitch’s real-life journey from Olympic-level swimmer to self-destructive drifter to literary phoenix. The film includes harrowing scenes of sexual abuse by her father and her spiral into drug use, juxtaposed with the poetic salvation she found in water.
In Stewart’s hands, the story becomes a fragmented, poetic howl of female pain and pleasure - delirious, violent, sexual, tender, and defiantly un-neat.
‘People say, “What’s the movie about?” and I’m like, “Oh f*ck, I don’t know—life?”’ she shrugged. ‘It’s about being in love. It’s about losing people. It’s about your parents fcking you up. It’s about writing. It’s about making art. It’s about how memory works. It’s about the ocean. It’s about the body. It’s about hating the body. It’s about loving the body. It’s about desire. And it’s also just this vibe.’
To sculpt the emotional tornado of Yuknavitch’s life into cinema, Stewart leaned on her chosen family of film women. Sofia Coppola, a friend and unofficial mentor, read the script and offered notes. ‘She’s so cool about it,’ Stewart said. ‘Just like: “Hey, what if this one thing was tighter?”’
She also personally wrote Fiona Apple a letter to request permission to use two of her songs in the film. ‘My hands were shaking!’ Stewart said of reaching out, before adding, ‘It worked - and she wrote me a letter back.’
Stewart knew making this film risked alienating a mainstream audience used to arcs and resolutions. And she didn’t care. ‘This isn’t a movie that’s trying to get an A on a test,’ she said. ‘It’s not about logic. It’s about feeling. It’s about letting yourself drown and see what’s still there when you come up.’
Her advice to young directors? Build your own process. Don’t copy anyone else’s. ‘If you accept a standardised series of events, you’re going to make something that we’ve seen before. And who wants that?’
By 2008, Stewart had become a household name as Bella Swan in Twilight. The five-film franchise grossed a combined £2.4billion worldwide and starred Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner as her love interests.
The Chronology of Water received a four-minute standing ovation on Friday night - and left many in the crowd wiping their eyes, as Poots’s performance and Stewart’s unflinchingly raw directing style were praised by critics.
The long-in-the-works passion project premiered in the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, which this year also features actor-director debuts from Scarlett Johansson (Eleanor the Great) and Harris Dickinson (Urchin). In addition to directing, Stewart co-wrote the screenplay with Yuknavitch’s husband, Andy Mingo.
‘Making movies is like being in a gang,’ Stewart said. ‘You have to pick your people and then ride or die.’
The Chronology of Water isn’t just Stewart’s debut. It’s her battle cry.
Kristen Stewart was speaking at The Breaking Through The Lens event at Hyde Beach by Campari.
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