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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