Kristen Stewart has been talking about her directorial debut for years now, and finally it’s here among the 2026 movie releases! The Twilight actress and Oscar nominee decided to helm an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water. It’s about how a woman develops her passions as a swimmer and a writer amidst dealing with the trauma of growing up with an abusive father. Stewart and Imogen Poots (who stars as Lidia) spoke to CinemaBlend about what it was like to shoot a movie with such difficult themes.
The Chronology of Water is a film that Stewart told us that she could see "seared into the insides" of her eyelids, but it was an emotional project for her and cast and crew. Here’s what she told us about what she observed from the actress behind Lydia:
There were like very English moments where [Imogen] would be like, ‘Okay, right. Yes. We'll have a good one bye, I'm done.’ And I’d be like, ‘have fun sleeping tonight. Let's see how that goes.' Because tomorrow is going to be even harder.’ She never had a moment to actually sit and process. It is probably after. Right? It was like stay, stay, stay, stay. And then when we wrapped, it was like, ‘Wait, where are we? Who, who are we now?’
Imogen Poots carries the weight of a particularly heavy role that explores how Lidia dealt with having a father who was verbally, physically and sexually abusive to her. In the movie, it can be disturbing to see Lidia act out some of these learned behaviors onto her own partner, and then slip into drug and alcohol abuse. Stewart said Poots was “very English” about the themes that had to be felt on set, and kept her emotions at bay. Here’s what Poots told us:
Obviously, you go home at night and you live your life, but I think this was the first time that felt like a rewiring of the brain to some extent. And, Lidia's life, it just lives in you. And then you can hope to try and access moments that you're going to put on celluloid. But yeah, I think it really does affect you… that isn't always the case, but, this one certainly did. And I can understand why in a way, it should have.
It sounds like it was a really tough role for Poots, but Kristen Stewart’s attention to the material is also palpable. The Chronology of Water is not only one of the rare LGBTQ+ movies to come out this year based on a memoir about a queer woman and helmed by a female director, it’s also being celebrated for having “ambition”, being “artful,” and compelling per Rotten Tomatoes along with earning an 89% critics score.
In our interview, Stewart also told us her thoughts on directing versus acting, sharing that it felt like she needed to put a “straightjacket” on to not control the process too much and trust that she had made all the preparations she had been working for. She’s been working on making The Chronology of Water for eight years, and previously talked about the difficulties she’s faced to get it financed.
Ultimately, she got Ridley Scott to be an executive producer on the independent production (among other names) which was shot in Latvia and Malta over just six weeks. It’s now playing in theaters.
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