LOS ANGELES — Imogen Poots is delivering a raw, full-body performance in Kristen Stewart’s feature-directing debut, “The Chronology of Water”, as the drama begins rolling out in select U.S. theaters from Dec. 5, 2025, with U.K. and Irish cinemas set for Feb. 6, 2026. Stewart’s adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir follows a swimmer turned writer as she tries to outrun an abusive childhood and remake trauma into art. Dec. 21, 2025.
The Chronology of Water and the art of making memory physical
Stewart has described the project as less a conventional biopic than a way to translate what Yuknavitch’s book does on the page. Speaking after the Cannes premiere, Stewart told Reuters: “I’m so proud of it. It’s like watching your kid go to school.” She also cited a line that pushed her toward the screen: “Can you hold life and death in the same sentence?”
That push-pull energy defines “The Chronology of Water” on film: memory shards, sensory flashes and sudden quiet where Poots’ face does the heavy lifting. Poots plays Yuknavitch with a volatility that moves from swagger to self-erasure without warning, turning even the character’s worst decisions into something recognizably human. The performance is fearless, but never ornamental.
Stewart’s camera often stays close to the body — water, breath, bruises, ink — as if the story can only be understood through sensation. Poots meets that approach head-on, making the film’s harder turns feel earned rather than engineered.
A long current to the screen for The Chronology of Water
The movie’s arrival closes a loop for a story that readers have been carrying for more than a decade. In a 2011 review, Publishers Weekly noted that the memoir’s events “swim in and out” of one another — a structure that rejects tidy chronology in favor of bodily memory.
Stewart publicly attached herself to the adaptation at Cannes in 2018, when Willamette Week reported she planned to direct the film as her feature debut. Even with Stewart’s profile, the financing took years to assemble; in early 2024, she said she was done taking the easy “yes” until this movie moved forward, according to Them.
Now distribution has caught up to that persistence. The British Film Institute said BFI Distribution will release “The Chronology of Water” in the U.K. and Ireland from Feb. 6, 2026. In the U.S., the film is currently playing in limited release, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Whether viewers find Stewart’s approach hypnotic or abrasive, most critics agree on one thing: Poots is the anchor. On RogerEbert.com, reviewer Sheila O’Malley argues that Stewart’s earlier short “Come Swim” works as a prelude, and that the new film builds its emotional force by showing how a person learns to shape memories into something survivable.
For audiences, “The Chronology of Water” is likely to be as challenging as it is cathartic: a debut that doesn’t sand down the memoir’s rough edges, and a star turn that refuses to look away.
