Kristen Stewart

“My French Cinema”

Spon­sored by

For this 51st edi­tion, the Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val offers audi­ences a close encounter with a major fig­ure of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 13th, actress, screen­writer and direc­tor Kris­ten Stew­art will share her per­spec­tive on French cin­e­ma and reveal a selec­tion of her favorite films.

Kris­ten Stew­art began her act­ing career at age 10 in a Dis­ney Chan­nel pro­duc­tion. In 2001, she nabbed her first inde­pen­dent film role in Rose Troche’s The Safe­ty of Objects, which won the Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val Crit­ics’ Award. The fol­low­ing year, she became wide­ly known for act­ing oppo­site Jodie Fos­ter in David Fincher’s Pan­ic Room. Inter­na­tion­al renown came in the late 2000s with the world­wide suc­cess of the Twi­light saga, in which she played the lead role oppo­site Robert Pat­tin­son. Despite attain­ing glob­al fame, she con­tin­ued her devo­tion to inde­pen­dent film, as evi­denced by her roles in Flo­ria Sigismondi’s The Run­aways and Jake Scott’s Wel­come to the Rileys, both pre­sent­ed at Deauville in 2010. In 2015, she became the first Amer­i­can actress to receive a César Award, in the Best Sup­port­ing Actress cat­e­go­ry, for her role in Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivi­er Assayas, who direct­ed her again the next year in Per­son­al Shop­per. That same year, she appeared in Woody Allen’s Café Soci­ety and Kel­ly Reichardt’s Cer­tain Women, both shown in com­pe­ti­tion at Deauville. Through­out her career, Kris­ten Stew­art has col­lab­o­rat­ed repeat­ed­ly with such major film­mak­ers as Bar­ry Levin­son, Wal­ter Salles, Ang Lee, Pablo Lar­rain and David Cro­nen­berg. In 2019, the Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val pre­sent­ed her with a Deauville Tal­ent Award, salut­ing the career of one of her generation’s most tal­ent­ed and sin­gu­lar actress­es. After direct­ing sev­er­al music videos, she made a first short film, Come Swim, pre­sent­ed at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2017. The Chronol­o­gy of Water, her fea­ture direc­to­r­i­al debut, was shown in the Un Cer­tain Regard sec­tion of this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val as well as in com­pe­ti­tion at the Deauville Amer­i­can Film Festival.