The Academy Women’s Luncheon is a lovely, warm annual celebration of women in the industry that gathers many of Hollywood’s most influential people on the picturesque rooftop of the Academy Museum.
“Wait, this is all women?! So sick!” Marty Supreme star Odessa A’Zion exclaimed when she entered the space on Nov. 4. It is sick – a gathering of women excited to raise each other up over a chic lunch, capped with a motivational speech from a notable actor. Usually, the keynote speaker is polite and uplifting. But at this year’s event, Kirsten Stewart had other plans. “We can be stoked today if we point out the elephant in the room: there are too few of us,” she said.
Stewart opened her speech by talking about her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, before turning to her main message: the extreme gender inequality that still plagues Hollywood. “It’s like we’re not even supposed to be angry, but I could eat this podium with a fork and fucking knife – I’m so angry,” she said.
Stewart was poised and passionate as she pointed out how few women still get opportunities to direct major releases. According to the most recent study from San Diego State University, women accounted for just 16 percent of directors working on the 250 highest-grossing domestic releases of 2024, and only 11 percent of the 100 most popular films—a drop of three percentage points from 2023.
“May I leave my contortionist skills at the door and speak from the heart? May I not conceal or reframe my anger, but share it so as to move through it to something more fun and more beautiful and less boring and more original?” she told the crowd. “Our business is in a state of emergency, man, and the last thing that I want to do here is lose the celebration under a pile of pissed-off rubble.”
The crowd at the event, presented by Chanel, listened closely—a group that included Tessa Thompson, Zoey Deutch, Kate Hudson, Sarah Paulson, Felicity Jones, Kaitlyn Dever, Claire Foy, Riley Keough, Kerry Condon, Alicia Silverstone, Emma Mackey, and Leslie Mann and her daughter Maude Apatow. Before Stewart’s keynote speech, the attendees were welcomed to their seats by Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor, who took over the leadership post only this past July.
The event was also a congratulatory moment for aspiring filmmakers Alina Simone and Marlén Viñayo, who will receive mentorship and support as this year’s recipients of the Gold Fellowship for Women.
As Stewart’s speech pointed out, female filmmakers do not face an easy road. “We are allowed to be proud of ourselves,” she said at the podium. “I’m 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 truth.”
In the end, Stewart was able to balance the celebratory tone of the event with a call to action aimed at those in the room. “What feels obvious to me is [that] pretending it isn’t happening is not an option,” she said. “Those of us who have been lucky enough to make a movie have a responsibility to those who are yet to come.”
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