"Hollywood has gone backwards," says Kristen Stewart

Twilight and Love Lies Bleeding star Kristen Stewart gave an impassioned speech about a lack of progress for women in Hollywood, as she believes the movie industry is going backwards. Stewart notes that the industry has returned to a "boys' club business model," following a shrinkage of female directors helming the top films of 2024 compared to 2020.

"The backsliding from a brief moment of progress is statistically devastating," Stewart said at a women's luncheon held in Los Angeles (via the BBC). "Such a pitiful number of films from the past year have been made by women."

"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 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."

"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," Stewart said. While it's true that most of a year's top films are likely going to be directed by men, that doesn't stop women from making powerful films. Greta Gerwig remains one of the biggest names among Hollywood directors today, and the likes of Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao, and Sofia Coppola are never far behind. Here's hoping that even in a Trump era where woke appears to have been forgotten that we can still see some representation in Hollywood.