Directors – Michelle Walshe, Lindsay Utz – 2025 – US, New Zealand – Cert. 12a – 102m
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A portrait of Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister – out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, December 5th
There has never been a documentary quite like this before, and perhaps there never will be again. For one thing, it turns out that Jacinda Ardern’s partner Clarke Gayford is an established TV producer who shot a wealth of home movie footage, albeit with professional equipment, throughout the period for which she served as New Zealand’s Prime Minister. For another, this home movie footage covers her pregnancy and the early years of her daughter Neve. For a third, as an MP she became involved with a project in which MPs would record their thoughts at various points during their tenure. When she agreed to this, no-one, including herself, had any idea that she would subsequently become Prime Minister. And that’s the fourth reason: this is a portrait of a PM in office who had no intention of being either a party leader or the Prime Minister of a country. And then who suddenly found herself the sole candidate for the post of leading New Zealand’s Labour Party weeks ahead of a General Election, in which she led the party to victory,
In this documentary, Jacinda (as I shall call her) describes being the leader of a country as “the worst job in politics”.… Read the rest
