Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut Was a ‘Comfy Process’

Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut was a “comfy process”.

The 27-year-old actress put herself into the director’s chair for upcoming short film Come Swim and she says having a big budget allowed it to be an easy project.

Speaking to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, she said: “People who are much more talented and inspired couldn’t ever have the opportunity to make a short film for the amount of money I was given to make this. I had eight days to shoot it. It was the most comfy process.”

The film, which is based on a man who sinks to the bottom of the ocean, is described as “a poetic, impressionistic portrait of a heartbroken man underwater”.

The movie stars Josh Kaye and Sydney Lopez and was produced as part of the Shatterbox Anthology project, run by US lifestyle website Refinery29, which aims to redress the lack of female directors in the film industry, after only seven per cent of the top 250 films in 2016 were directed by women.

Stewart has worked under the direction of several female directors including Floria Sigismondi – who directed 2010’s The Runaways – and The Twilight Saga‘s co-director Catherine Hardwicke, and has praised their craftsmanship.

She said: “The coolest female directors I’ve ever worked with are such compulsive freaks. The female artists who do the best work, they’re just so focused that nothing is going to get in their way. It’s hard to talk about, because you need to talk about it to change it, but at the same time it’s like, ‘Just do it’.”

Despite delving into directing, Stewart is in no hurry to helm a film again as she doesn’t want to make a movie just “for the sake of it”.

She said: “People keep asking, ‘So what’s next for you? Do you want to develop projects?’ I feel they have just come to you. I don’t want to do an impression of a film-maker. I don’t want to do it for the sake of it.”