The chronology of water

Kristen Stewart’s long-anticipated directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, is as daring as it is uncompromising, a film that refuses to obey the usual grammar of biopics or adaptations and instead plunges into the raw, disjointed, and painfully poetic territory of memory itself. Based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, the film is neither a neat retelling nor a straightforward translation from page to screen. It is closer to a visceral immersion, as though Kristen Stewart has taken the rhythms of Yuknavitch’s prose, its fragmented cadences and eruptive honesty, and transformed them into cinematic language. From the opening moments—images of water, blood, and fragments of a broken life crashing against each other in jagged montage—it is clear Kristen Stewart intends to drown us in sensation before allowing us to come up for air.

Shot on grainy 16mm by cinematographer Corey C. Waters, the film establishes a texture that feels at once intimate and abrasive, evoking the impression of faded home movies but layered with a haunting immediacy. This choice is not aesthetic indulgence but essential to Kristen Stewart’s method: memory is imperfect, scalded by trauma, blurred by time, and yet it is all-consuming. Through extreme close-ups, static frames, and bursts of chaotic editing by Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Kristen Stewart builds a mosaic of experiences that capture not what happened to Lidia Yuknavitch, but how it was felt. There is a reason the film dispenses with exposition, establishing shots, or traditional chronology—this is not a story remembered, it is one relived.

At the center of this cinematic storm is Imogen Poots, who delivers the most arresting performance of her career. Playing Lidia from adolescence through adulthood, Imogen Poots embodies a character fractured by abuse, addiction, and grief, yet still pulsing with defiance and a desperate hunger for self-definition. Kristen Stewart’s decision to cast her throughout all stages of Lidia’s life emphasizes how trauma collapses time: the abused child never leaves the adult, the young swimmer never stops gasping for air in the pool. Imogen Poots carries this duality in her eyes, in the sudden jolts of rage, in the exhausted tremors of her body. Her Lidia is sometimes unreachable, consumed by alcohol, drugs, or destructive sexual encounters, but even in her lowest moments there is a flicker of fire that refuses to extinguish. Watching her is not only devastating but also strangely exhilarating, as if she channels Yuknavitch’s mantra that survival itself can be a form of art.

The supporting cast brings layers of humanity and tragedy to this turbulent story. Thora Birch as Claudia, the sister who flees home only to return when Lidia is most vulnerable, conveys survivor’s guilt with quiet poignancy. Michael Epp, as the abusive father, never veers into caricature; his handsome, composed exterior makes his cruelty all the more chilling, a reminder of how abuse often hides behind the mask of normalcy. Susannah Flood, as the alcoholic mother, represents absence in its most destructive form—her silence, her refusal to see, is almost as violent as her husband’s acts. Later, Jim Belushi is a revelation as author Ken Kesey, whose irreverent mentorship offers Lidia not salvation but a glimpse of possibility, a recognition that her words matter. And in brief but powerful appearances, Kim Gordon as a dominatrix and Esmé Creed-Miles as a guiding friend remind us of the many unexpected figures who help carve a path out of darkness.

What Kristen Stewart achieves as a filmmaker is not just representation of trauma but embodiment. The way water is used throughout—as escape, as danger, as rebirth—becomes the film’s unifying metaphor. Swimming is at once Lidia’s refuge from her father’s violence and the arena in which she is punished, yet the image of water persists as a place where she can shed the weight of her body and become something beyond gender, beyond pain. The recurring shots of blood in water, of bodies submerged or resurfacing, are never cheap symbols. They are the visual vocabulary of survival, the evidence of how Lidia both lost and found herself through these elemental encounters.

What is most remarkable is that despite the brutality of its subject matter—sexual abuse, self-destruction, stillbirth, failed relationships—the film never feels exploitative. Kristen Stewart handles the darkest material with a mature restraint, often keeping violence off-screen but letting its reverberations quake through Imogen Poots’ performance and the dissonant sound design. In a particularly devastating scene, young Lidia sits in a car while her sister disappears into the woods with their father; they return empty-handed, without the Christmas tree they were meant to cut down, and with eyes that reveal everything without a word spoken. It is in moments like these that Kristen Stewart’s refusal to sensationalize reveals her greatest strength: she trusts silence and implication more than spectacle.

At times, The Chronology of Water risks overwhelming its audience. The relentlessness of its structure, the refusal to offer narrative clarity or reprieve, can feel exhausting, and some may find the poetic voiceovers veering too close to diary entries. Yet this intensity is the point. Kristen Stewart is not making a film designed for comfort but for confrontation. She dares us to sit in the turbulence, to feel the chaos of memory that refuses neat resolution. In doing so, she delivers a debut that is closer to avant-garde cinema than conventional storytelling, echoing experimental figures like Maya Deren or early Gus Van Sant, while still grounded in the immediacy of Yuknavitch’s own words.

The final act of the film offers no easy catharsis, only a fragile suggestion of healing. Lidia, scarred but not defeated, begins to find her voice as a writer, channeling her pain into language that will outlast her body. The film’s closing invitation—“Come in. The water will hold you”—is as much directed at us as at Lidia herself. Kristen Stewart, too, seems to be speaking through it, announcing that cinema can hold these stories, however fragmented, however raw, and give them permanence.

With The Chronology of Water, Kristen Stewart has not only proven that she is unafraid to direct but that she has arrived as an artist of formidable vision. This is not a tentative first step but a leap into uncharted waters, messy, imperfect, and yet extraordinary. Anchored by Imogen Poots’s transformative performance and shaped by Kristen Stewart’s bold refusal to conform, the film stands as one of the most audacious directorial debuts in recent memory. It is not an easy watch, nor should it be. Like Yuknavitch’s memoir, it insists that pain, when spoken and embodied, can become something more than suffering—it can become survival, art, and, ultimately, truth.

The chronology of water
Directed by Kristen Stewart
Written by Kristen Stewart, Andy Mingo
Based on The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Produced by Ridley Scott, Charles Gillibert, Yulia Zayceva, Max Pavlov, Svetlana Punte, Michael Pruss, Rebecca Feuer, Kristen Stewart, Maggie McLean, Dylan Meyer, Andy Mingo
Starring  Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Kim Gordon, Jim Belushi
Cinematography : Corey C. Waters
Edited by Olivia Neergaard-Holm
Production companies : Scott Free Productions, Forma Pro Films, CG Cinéma, Nevermind Pictures, Fremantle, Curious Gremlin, Lorem Ipsum Entertainment, Scala Films
Distributed by Les Films du Losange (France)
Release date : May 16, 2025 (Cannes), December 10, 2025 (France)
Running time : 128 minutes

Seen on September 12 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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