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Kristen Stewart has spoken out against “the violence of silencing” female directors in the film industry, which she described as being “in a state of emergency”.
Speaking at the Academy Women’s Luncheon on Tuesday, Stewart said her fellow women in film should reject tokenism and “print our own currency”.
“It’s awkward to talk about inequality for some people,” said Stewart. “We can discuss wage gaps and taxes on tampons and measure it in lots of quantifiable ways, but the violence of silencing ... It’s like we’re not even supposed to be angry. But I could eat this podium with a fork and fucking knife, I’m so angry.”
Stewart spent eight years trying to get her passion project – an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water – off the ground. The film, which stars Imogen Poots, premiered at Cannes in May and is shortly to be released in the US.
Stewart began her speech crediting Yuknavitch as a key inspiration and saying her memoir gave “voice to certain truths I inherently understood”.
“Hard truths, when spoken out loud, become springboards to freedom,” Stewart said. “The permission to be unpalatable, unsanitary, and to come from the inside out … led me to acknowledge the invisible cage that we are all living in and how easy it is to story our way out there.”
Stewart said that women’s voices appeared to have gained more traction since #MeToo, but that the industry was still afraid of unsanitised stories. “I can now attest to the bare-knuckle brawling that it takes every step of the way when the content is too dark, too taboo,” she said. “Our business,” she continued, “is in a state of emergency.
“We are allowed to be proud of ourselves,” said Stewart. “But let’s try not to be tokenised. Let’s start printing our own currency.”
“I am so for you,” she concluded. “I hope you are too. Let’s make art in the face of it.”
Attendees at the event included Tessa Thompson, Kate Hudson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Claire Foy, Kerry Condon, Patty Jenkins, and Emma Mackey. Also speaking at the forum was costume designer Ruth Carter, who in 2023 became the first black woman to win two Oscars.
Carter paid tribute to her college professor, as well as the directors Spike Lee and John Singleton, “who gave me room to learn and grow – that’s what mentorship and fellowship do. They say to every woman film-maker and artist: We see you. We believe in you. You belong here.”
In 2023, the number of women who directed the top-grossing US films declined slightly, from 18% to 16%, while in the UK, some 13% of directors of all films were women.
In Europe, the number is believed to be a little higher, at around 23%, across all films.
A study published last year found a “catastrophic” 10-year low for on screen female representation in film, with only 30 of the US’s top 100 films led or co-led by women, down from 44 in 2022.
This was despite the $1.4bn success of Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s comedy starring Margot Robbie. This season, the two women who have previously won the best director Oscar – Chloé Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow, are believed to be frontrunners to take the prize again at next year’s ceremony, for their films Hamnet and A House of Dynamite.
