Stewart adapts memoir in directorial debut: ‘The Chronology of Water’

Cinema | April 27th, 2026

By Greg Carlson

Kristen Stewart’s critically well-received directorial debut should do better in its second life on digital streaming platforms and VOD than it did during the very limited theatrical release it received stateside at the tail of end of 2025. For physical media collectors overseas (as well as those in the United States with region-free players), the British Film Institute’s Blu-ray became available on April 27, 2026. Shot on glorious 16mm by Corey C. Waters, “The Chronology of Water” approaches Lidia Yuknavitch’s raw 2011 memoir with the cinematic intensity of a veteran filmmaker at the helm.

For admirers who have watched Stewart make a series of strong choices following the peak of her young fame as Bella Swan in the “Twilight” franchise, the sharp visual sensibilities at play in “The Chronology of Water” will come as no surprise. Like her frequent co-star Robert Pattinson, Stewart shrewdly alternates between high-profile studio films and much smaller arthouse fare made by visionary talents. Stewart’s directors, including Kelly Reichardt, Olivier Assayas, David Cronenberg, Pablo Larrain and Rose Glass, have obviously been excellent instructors. Stewart proves as comfortable behind the cameras as she is in front of it, turning “The Chronology of Water” into a compelling piece of biographical fiction and a showcase for lead Imogen Poots.

Poots plays Yuknavitch over the span of quite a few years, beginning in high school as the competitive swimmer whose desire to escape her controlling and sexually abusive father (a frequently chilling Michael Epp) would take her from Olympic aspirations to drug and alcohol-fueled self-destructiveness. The performer’s work here, arguably her career-best, is all the more remarkable given director Stewart’s commitment to the deliberately fragmentary approach that embraces frequent time-jumps and vignettes. Poots and Stewart collaborate to resist any temptation they might have had to represent Yuknavitch with any one of the reductive traits that might otherwise drive an adaptation.

In other words, the Lidia we encounter onscreen is, like the complex personality of the page, simply not reducible. Her bad choices do not translate into the common movie cliches that would result from catastrophic losses. Certainly, the audience sees Lidia pushed to the limits of endurance in circumstances that could cause anyone to “act out.” But Stewart treats atonement and reconciliation with the same matter-of-factness that accompanies everything from Lidia’s fluid sexuality and BDSM experimentation to the court-mandated community service she is required to perform.

In one of the movie’s longest sustained sections, Yuknavitch finds her way to the University of Oregon and a group collaboration with legendary writer and counterculture figure Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi) that would result in the 1989 novel “Caverns.” True to the style she has established, Stewart filters the experience through the perception of Lidia, who simultaneously seems grateful for Kesey’s companionship/mentorship and wary of what could be construed as nearly inappropriate attention. Certainly, the flinty encounter between Kesey and Lidia’s dad underlines the fragile father-daughter dynamics that haunt her, but for the most part, Stewart shows as much restraint here as she does throughout the film’s many short but effective passages.

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