The actor-writer-director’s new film Timestalker sees her pursue an unsuspecting crush through the centuries. She discusses sexism in the film and TV industry, her dream of being a comedy-horror auteur - and why she’s scared of Kristen Stewart

‘I had killed a lot of people in other films,” says Alice Lowe, whose first feature, 2016’s Prevenge, saw her play a pregnant serial killer. “This time I just felt like I should kill myself.” Agnes, the hero of Lowe’s new film, Timestalker, meets many grisly endings. Played by Lowe, she’s pursuing her dream man through the centuries, from prehistoric forests to 80s New York. But in every era, before true love can blossom, her time is cut short. Then she’s reincarnated, ready to try again.

Timestalker is a romance. Or is it? It’s about reincarnation. Or is it? Just as in Prevenge, where a woman grapples with the line between truth and fantasy when she hears her foetus issuing murderous instructions, we’re invited to question what’s real as we’re immersed in Agnes’s muddled mind. The film is dreamlike: scenes have a powdery, shimmery quality and a surreal theatricality. “I wanted it to be delusional, and that you stay in that delusion, you don’t have the bubble burst,” says Lowe. “They’re all trapped. The joke with this is that people can’t change. Even though they’re her dreams, she’s still dying.”