Kristen Stewart's directorial debut gets four-minute ovation at Cannes

Imogen Poots’ performance was certainly a highlight of Stewart’s adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir of the same name. Poots stars as Yuknavitch in Stewart’s non-linear take on the bestselling writer’s life, which includes shocking scenes of sexual abuse by her father and her spiral into drug use juxtaposed with the poetic salvation she found from being in water.

Stewart hugged everyone in the cast and crew and directed the attention toward them. After kissing her wife Dylan Meyer, she allowed the spotlight to shine on her, accepting the mic from Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux for a short speech.

“This is an absolutely insane, surreal experience to be able to be here and watch this with all of you guys. We finished the movie like five minutes ago, it’s not even finished yet. We just slipped under this fucking shut door and goddamn it thank you,” Stewart said to Fremaux, before literally leaping into his arms.

The long-in-the-works passion project world premiered in the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, which this year also features debuts from fellow actors such as Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson.

In addition to directing, Stewart co-wrote the film’s screenplay alongside Yuknavitch’s husband, Andy Mingo, reports variety.com.

Stewart first announced the development of “Chronology of Water” in 2018.

In her cover story for variety.com in January 2024, Stewart shared that she had been struggling to finance the movie and would refuse to act in another film until she was able to get “The Chronology of Water” finished.

She was able to do just that in summer 2024, when the movie filmed for six weeks in Latvia and Malta. The cast also includes Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Kim Gordon and Jim Belushi.

Stewart was honest about her struggles to get the film financed. She said it was “near impossible” to raise money for a movie that was an original idea and not based on a proven genre or pre-existing IP.

“I think there’s an entire, yet-to-be-written female language,” Stewart said.

“There’s a certain physicality to the type of film that I want to make that I think will be, in a slugline, really unattractive to quote-unquote ‘buyers,’ but in action, is entirely pervasively moving. That has just not been an easy sell. It’s not about the plot. It’s about someone self-Heimliching and contextualizing why that person has swallowed their own voice their whole life.”