Kristen Stewart called out Hollywood's "devastating" lack of progress with female filmmakers in a fiery speech on Tuesday.
Delivering the keynote address at the Academy and Chanel's Women's Luncheon in Los Angeles, the Twilight actress called out Hollywood for slowly walking back the progress it made with female filmmakers and female-led films following the #MeToo movement in 2017.
"In a post-MeToo moment, it seemed possible that stories made by and for women were finally getting their due, that we might be allowed or even encouraged to express ourselves and our shared experiences, all of our experiences without filter," she began.
The star, who recently made her feature directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, continued, "But I can now attest to the bare-knuckle brawling that it takes every step of the way when the content is too dark, too taboo, when the frankness with which it serves up observations about experiences routinely experienced by women, frequently provokes disgust and rejection."
The 35-year-old actress, who candidly told the crowd that she was experiencing "severe PMS", or premenstrual syndrome, added that she was "so angry" by the "violence of silencing" women and their stories.
"The backsliding from a brief moment of progress is statistically devastating. It is devastating. Such a pitiful number of films from the past year have been made by women," the star stated, reports Variety. "There are too few of us. We're all here together now, and it seems like there's a lot, Jesus Christ, there's not."
Concluding her seven-minute speech, the Spencer star declared, "I am thankful to you. I am not grateful to a boys' club business model that pretends to want to hang out with us while siphoning our resources and belittling our true perspectives. Let's try and not be tokenised. Let's start printing our own currency."
According to Variety, Stewart received several rounds of applause from the audience, which featured the likes of Kate Hudson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Riley Keough, Felicity Jones, Tessa Thompson, and Stewart's wife, screenwriter Dylan Meyer.
