Calling all monied gays and/or allies: Please give Kristen Stewart money to make her directorial debut before it’s too late.
In a recent interview with Variety, the actor declared that she wouldn’t be making another movie for someone else until she got funding for her adaptation of The Chronology of Water, the very queer memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch.
She doubled down on her convictions in a recent red carpet interview at the Sundance Film Festival with The Hollywood Reporter. Though Stewart acknowledged that pledging not to act in any other projects until she makes her movie was “an extreme thing to say,” she said, “I really won’t. I have to do it.” When asked by Variety about her luck with financing, she responded, “I wish I had more to say on that. I’m going to make that fucking movie!”
“I think Sundance is definitely a place to understand that the only reason that you should make something is because you need to do it,” she continued. “If I keep working for other people, even if I’m inspired and totally in love with those stories, what am I doing?”
Stewart initially announced her intention to adapt the memoir at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. In 2022, she announced that she had cast Imogen Poots as the star of the film, and that she’d be co-writing the script with Andy Mingo. The actor also spoke about the urgency of the project at the time, telling Deadline, “Lidia’s memoir honors corporeal experience, radically.”
“To make that experience physical feels vital to me and what this impulse means … is that it absolutely must be a film,” she continued.
But per Variety, Stewart has struggled to secure the financial backing for the film since then, leading her to declare her one-woman strike. It would be a real shame if Stewart actually stepped back from the business, even temporarily, considering that she’s currently starring in a number of exciting, transgressive films, including Love Me directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero, which is about a buoy and a satellite that fall in love. She’s also starring in Love Lies Bleeding directed by Rose Glass, the lesbian bodybuilding thriller that we’ll be first in line for at the theater on opening day.
It’s clear that Stewart’s passion lies in telling stories that are often overlooked, which she reinforced in her interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “The reason we want to make movies is because we love them, but they’re not for all of us yet,” she said, “and they’re starting to inch toward being for all of us because all of us are making them. Or at least maybe that’s what we’re saying we’re doing. Let’s see if we really do it.”
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