Stream Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut 'Come Swim'

When Kristen Stewart‘s directorial debut, “Come Swim,” was first announced to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the synopsis made it clear it wasn’t going to be your standard narrative:

This is a diptych of one man’s day, half impressionist and half realist portraits.

Indeed, the 18-minute short film — which features a score by St. Vincent — is an avant-garde piece about memory and love lost.

“….this movie is like full-frontal heartbreak. I’m definitely not shying away from that, that’s absolutely what it’s about,” Stewart told Refinery29 in January. “It’s that first fall to this existential netherworld. You can attack yourself with memories or, depending on perspective, you can take a step back and say, ‘Actually, it wasn’t so bad. That was fun, we did have fun and it was nice.’ So I had my two actors play in a pool and talk to each other and I gave them a couple of key words. But they said some stuff that we pulled and made really negative and terrifying and kind of ominous in the beginning.”

“He’s killing himself with these memories and his brain is so scattered and he literally cannot get the voices out of his head, but in reality it wasn’t so bad,” she continued. “He regrets everything he said and he’s like ‘Ugh, why couldn’t I have just done this different?’ He’s just reevaluating everything and going over every word he ever said to her being like, ‘How could I have saved this, how could I have fixed this, it’s all my fault, I fucked it all up.’ In the second part of the film, you’re just like, ‘Dude you didn’t, it just kind of fell apart, that’s what happened.’ I just wanted to externalize an incredibly internal struggle and then see it again from the outside.”

You can now watch Stewart’s ambitious debut for free, and it will be interesting to see where her artistic voice goes next.