Earl Cave hopes Cannes audiences walk out of The Chronology of Water.

“It’s a very bold and quite outrageous film,” the young star teases. “If everyone sat there liking it, something’s wrong. If there’s people running out screaming, I think it’s a good sign.”

The Brit is the son of rocker Nick Cave — best known as frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — and it must be said, the resemblance is striking.

The younger Cave, with a mop of jet black hair and thick eyebrows just like his father, is talking to The Hollywood Reporter about being directed by Kristen Stewart in her feature film debut.

“She is the most generous director [and] it was the most beautiful sight to behold,” the 24-year-old gushes. “Her being an actor, she’d just do these things that directors would never do, which was so refreshing. She’d say, ‘If you look over there and you kind of open your mouth slightly, you’re gonna look really hot.’ And I’m like, ‘Great!’ This is all I’ve ever wanted: a director to tell me where to look.

This small glimpse into the inner workings of Kristen Stewart (The director) confirms everything we already thought we knew about the Twilight superstar: effortlessly cool, but takes her work seriously. These qualities will be on full display when Stewart and her Chronology cast arrive in Cannes to tell the story of the once-hopeful Olympic swimmer, Lidia Yuknavitch.

The movie is based off of Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir of the same name. “It’s about her life, growing up as a young woman,” Cave explains. “[She had] a very tormented and abusive life, which made her start writing in a way that was incredibly moving. It’s about her career as a swimmer, the trials and tribulations she had go through — and her life is absolutely bizarre. The film itself, it’s portrayed [her life] in quite a psychedelic and free-flowing form.”

Cave, starring opposite Imogen Poots as the central character, plays Lidia’s husband, Philip. “He’s this kid from Tennessee that she met at university who just sits around playing a guitar a lot,” he says, revealing that Stewart features one of Cave’s original songs in the film (“I was given the opportunity of combining two things I love most in this world”). He continues: “Philip counterbalanced Lidia’s manic-ness. She was a tornado of a woman, and he was very loving and kind, but unfortunately she was a little bit too difficult for Philip.”

Stewart, who Cave describes as “an absolute ball of energy,” happened upon Cave in 2023’s The Sweet East. “It felt like we’d known each other for years,” he recalls about their first call when she approached him for the role of Philip. “I think we’re kindred spirits. You know, my whole life, I’ve actually been told that I look like her. So it was sort of like I was on FaceTime with myself.”

Does he feel like he’s entering a very different industry to the one Stewart did in the early 2000s? “I’ve always been a big believer that the cinema is a place to escape from the world,” Cave responds. “I don’t think it’s necessarily film’s duty to be a voice for politics of what’s happening.”

He references his next movie, coincidentally the very project that’ll stop Cave joining Stewart and Poots on the Croisette as George Jaques’s Sunny Dancer, about a 17-year-old with cancer forced to sign up for a summer “chemo camp” by her parents, shoots in Glasgow.

“Everything’s fucked, right?” Cave continues. “But this film has hope, which is rare. There’s a difference between optimism and hope — optimism is allowing the potential for good, but hope is looking for good. That’s what George is doing.”

“I want to work with Kristen again, and definitely George again,” he says when asked what piques his interest as a young actor with the world at his feet. Granted, Cave admits he’s gunning for a shot at a horror flick and would relish the chance to work with master of the genre Dario Argento, but ultimately, it’s an air of buoyancy, of aspiration, that he’s most attracted to. “It’s amazing to make a film that isn’t necessarily hopeful, but it just doesn’t happen as much these days. So you have to look for hope in this day and age. [I’m looking for] films that do that.”