‘I could eat this platform with a fork and knife and I’m so angry’: Kristen Stewart criticizes filmmakers’ negligence | Kristen Stewart

Kristen Stewart has spoken out against the “violence of silencing” of female directors in the film industry, which she described as “in a state of emergency”.

Speaking at the Academy’s women’s luncheon on Tuesday, Stewart said her fellow filmmakers should reject tokenism and “print our own currency.”

“It’s embarrassing to talk about inequality for some people,” Stewart said. “We can discuss wage gaps and tampon taxes and measure them in so many quantifiable ways, but the violence of silence… it’s like we’re not even supposed to be angry. But I could eat this platform with a fucking fork and knife, I’m so angry.”

Stewart spent eight years trying to launch her passion project — an adaptation of Lydia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir “The Chronology of Water.” The film, starring Imogen Poots, premiered at Cannes in May and is scheduled to be released soon in the US.

Stewart began her speech crediting Yuknavitch as a major inspiration and said her memoir gave “voice to some truths that I naturally understood.”

“Hard truths, when spoken out loud, become a stepping stone to freedom,” Stewart said. “Allowing myself to be unpalatable, unhealthy, and coming from the inside out…led me to acknowledge the invisible cage we all live in and how easy it is to story our way out of there.”

Women’s voices seem to have gained more attention since #MeToo, but the industry is still afraid of uncorrected stories, Stewart said. “I can now attest to the bare-knuckle fight that takes every step of the way when the content is so dark, so taboo,” she said. She continued: “We worked in a state of emergency.

“We are allowed to be proud of ourselves,” Stewart said. “But let’s try not to be tokenistic. Let’s start printing our own currency.”

“I am for you too,” she concluded. “I hope you are. Let’s make art in the face of this.”

Attendees at the event included Tessa Thompson, Kate Hudson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Claire Foy, Kerry Condon, Patty Jenkins and Emma Mackey. Fashion designer Ruth Carter, who in 2023 became the first black woman to win two Oscars, also spoke at the forum.

Carter praised her professor, as well as directors Spike Lee and John Singleton, “who gave me space to learn and grow — that’s what mentorship and fellowship do. They say to every woman filmmaker and artist: We see you. We believe in you. You belong here.”

In 2023, the number of women directing top-grossing US films fell slightly, from 18% to 16%, while in the UK, about 13% of directors of all films were women.

In Europe, the figure is thought to be slightly higher, at around 23%, across all films.

A study published last year found that female on-screen representation in cinema is at a “catastrophic” 10-year low, with only 30 of the top 100 US films led or co-led, down from 44 in 2022.

This was despite the $1.4 billion success of the Barbie comedy, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie. This season, the two women who previously won the Academy Award for Best Director – Chloé Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow – are believed to be the favorites to win the award again at next year’s ceremony, for their films “Hament” and “House of Dynamite.”