Delivering the keynote speech at the Academy and Chanel’s 2025 Women’s Luncheon in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Kristen Stewart issued a dire warning about the state of cinema (via Variety and People). Ahead of the release of her directorial debut The Chronology Of Water, Stewart admitted she was in a “severe state of PMS” while delivering her remarks. “But I relish being able to say that my nerves are close to the surface of my skin, and it is a great day for that,” she told her audience of Hollywood power players.
“In a post-Me Too moment, it seemed possible that stories made by and for women were finally getting their due, that we might be allowed or even encouraged to express ourselves and our shared experiences, all of our experiences without filter,” she said. The Chronology Of Water took Stewart eight years to make, as she told Vanity Fair the movie “has gotten fucking battered.” At the Women’s Luncheon, she said she “can now attest to the bare-knuckle brawling that it takes every single frame, when the content is too dark, too taboo, when the frankness with which it serves up observations about experiences routinely experienced by women frequently provoke disgust and rejection.”
The actor-director continued, “So in my hormonally activated state let’s get further into this. It’s awkward to talk about inequality for some people, and it’s more awkward when the nature of inequality is somewhat ephemeral. We can discuss wage gaps and taxes on tampons and measure it in lots of quantifiable ways, but the violence is silencing. It’s like we’re not even supposed to be angry. But I can eat this podium with a fork and fucking knife, I’m so angry.”
Stewart observed, “The backsliding from our brief moment of progress is statistically devastating. It is devastating. Such a pitiful number of films from the past year have been made by women.” Per IndieWire, the annual UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report found that no woman or other-gender person of any race or ethnicity had the opportunity to direct a big-budget film (meaning over $100 million) in 2024. The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that the number of movies with female leads in 2024 reached a 10-year low, described by the study’s research head as a “catastrophic step back for girls and women in film” and “an industry failure” (per The Guardian).
Stewart delivered much the same message, noting that “our business is in a state of emergency, man.” She told her fellow female film professionals, “There are too few of us. We’re all here together now, and it seems like there’s a lot, Jesus Christ, there’s not. It’s not our fault.” She encouraged the women in attendance “to be proud of ourselves” and be grateful for their opportunities. “I am thankful to you,” she said. “I am not grateful to a boys’ club business model that pretends to want to hang out with us while siphoning our resources and belittling our true perspectives. Let’s try and not be tokenized. Let’s start printing our own currency.”
Supporting the rights for everyone of any gender or perspective to use their “true voice,” Stewart said, “What feels obvious to me is pretending it isn’t happening is not an option. Those of us who have been lucky enough to make a movie have a responsibility to those who are yet to come.” She told her audience, “I am so for you. I hope you are too. Let’s make art in the face of it.”
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