Kristen Stewart has been “wanting to make movies since I was nine or 10 years old,” she told me on her fourth trip to Cannes in 2017, for the short “Come Swim.” She’s been a fixture at the festival ever since her maiden voyage in 2012 with Walter Salles’ “On the Road,” followed by Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society,” Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Personal Shopper,” and David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future.” She also served on Cate Blanchett’s Competition jury in 2018.

Stewart’s audacious debut, the Un Certain Regard entry “The Chronology of Water,” was well-received. After eight years of development, Scott Free financed the mood poem about swimming and writing for survival amid personal trauma. Stewart is ebullient after having talked about making her first feature for so long. Back in 2022, she announced that she was adapting (with Andy Mingo) Lidia Yuknavitch’s frank 2011 memoir. Stewart...