LOS ANGELES — Imogen Poots brings a bruised, unguarded intensity to “The Chronology of Water,” Kristen Stewart’s Cannes-premiered feature directing debut, as the drama prepares to expand to theaters nationwide Jan. 9, 2026. Adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, Stewart’s film uses a fractured, sensory style to show not just what happened, but how a swimmer and writer survives abuse, addiction and loss, Dec. 20, 2025.
Imogen Poots makes “The Chronology of Water” impossible to look away from
Imogen Poots plays Yuknavitch as restless and searching — a woman who ricochets between self-destruction and reinvention, sometimes in the span of a single scene. The performance is physical and plainspoken, built from breath, posture and impulse rather than tidy explanation.
In a recent interview, Poots described Yuknavitch as “kind of like the weather,” a line that captures the character’s sudden shifts and hard-won calm.
Cannes buzz, a limited run and a January expansion
“I’m so proud of it. It’s like watching your kid go to school,” Stewart told Reuters after the May 2025 premiere in Cannes, France, framing her first feature as something intimate, messy and meant to be felt.
The release plan mirrors that festival-to-art-house pipeline. The film opens in select theaters Dec. 5, 2025, before widening nationwide Jan. 9, 2026, according to release details tied to the official trailer.
Showtime listings currently peg the wide opening at Jan. 9, 2026, with a 2-hour, 8-minute runtime.
A film built for sensation, not simple summary
Stewart’s approach favors immersion over clean chronology. The movie was shot on 16mm, a texture critic Sheila O’Malley says makes it feel like “watching someone’s brain flip through fragments of the past,” in a review that also notes how the film treats sexuality as reclamation rather than spectacle.
That jagged, impressionistic style can only work if the center holds. Imogen Poots supplies that gravity, making the story’s leaps — in time, tone and memory — feel like part of the same body moving through water.
Why the project has been years in the making
The long runway is part of the film’s lore. Stewart first talked publicly about adapting Yuknavitch’s memoir while serving on the Cannes jury in 2018, saying she was “adapting a memoir” called “The Chronology of Water.”
By late 2022, Imogen Poots was attached to star, and Stewart described the memoir’s commitment to the body as vital to her approach, in a statement cited in early coverage.
Now, with the nationwide expansion set for Jan. 9, Imogen Poots’ performance stands as the film’s clearest invitation: difficult material translated with nerve, and carried by an actor willing to meet it head-on.
