Tag: labour

Prime Minister

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 5 December 2025
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Directors – Michelle Walshe, Lindsay Utz – 2025 – US, New Zealand – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

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

Tags advice, Andrew Little, Antarctic, ascendancy, authenticity, autobiographical family footage, automatic weapons, baby, backlash, being oneself, Boris Johnson, Boston, bump, buyback programme, camped out on the lawn, child’s early years, Christchurch mosque shootings, Clarke Gayford, cleared by the authorities, closed borders, conspiracy theories, couple, COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-free, crises, Decision To Leave, Deputy Leader, electable leader, Ernest Shackleton, events, explorer, family life, focus groups, fully-rounded, General Election, gun law reform, gun laws, home movie, human lives, husbands and wives, immigration. Let’s Do This, in office, in which a man shot about a hundred people, intention, Jacinda Ardern, kindness, labour, Labour Party, Lindsay Utz, Massachusetts, Michelle Walshe, mother, motherhood, mothers and daughters, MP, MPs record thoughts, New Zealand, office, optimist, parenting duties, Parliament Building, partner, pleased to meet you, PM in office, political party, poll ratings, pregnancy, pregnant. pregnancy, press conference, prime minister, Q-Anon, redesign yourself, right wing rhetoric, semi-automatic weapons, service to others, ship locked by ice, social media, social welfare, someone who doesn’t do economics, starting a fire, stepping down, survival of his men rather, tape recordings, the worst job in politics, TV producer, United Nations, US, victory, weight on your shoulders, world manifesto

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Hostile

Director – Sonita Gale – 2021 – UK – Cert. 12a – 98m

**1/2

A documentary about the UK’s anti-immigrant Hostile Environment policy includes a brief history plus stories of both those it affected and a charity set up to help them – out in cinemas on Friday, January 21st, local screening details constantly being added here

The eponymous adjective refers to the UK’s attitude to immigrants since 2012: the so-called Hostile Environment. Make Britain an unpleasant enough place for immigrants, and they’ll leave.

Gale’s film has three main plot strands. The first follows the Sair family, from Pakistan, resident in the UK since 2003. The second follows the fortunes of the Community Response Kitchen, a non-profit organisation set up to feed low paid workers in the London Borough of Brent. The third is a brief history of anti-immigration rhetoric and policy in the UK. Further material includes interviews with Windrush generation Brit Anthony Bryan and MP Stephen Timms, among others.

The story of the Sairs makes for depressing viewing. In 2003, Farrukh Sair married Saba in Pakistan. Four months later, the couple moved to the UK on a student visa to do a course. Today, they have a family, kids who have spent their entire lives in the UK.… Read the rest

Tags 1940s, 1968, 1999, 2010s, Anthony Bryan, Benefit Tourism, Boris Johnson, breadline, Brexit, British citizenship, Caribbean, cash cows, citizens, Commonwealth, Community Response Kitchen, conservative, Daksha Varsani, David Cameron, David Lammy, deportation paperwork, Enoch Powell, Farrukh Sair, government funding, government policy, Home Office, Home Secretary, hostile environment, immigration, India, labour, legal, London Borough of Brent, low paid, Member of Parliament, MP, New Labour, NHS, No Recourse To Public Funds, non-profit, NRPF, Pakista, Pakistan, pandemic, Paresh Jethwa, Parliament, PM, Points Of Light award, policy, poor, post-war, prime minister, Priti Patel, proof, rejection, resident, Rivers Of Blood, scandal, Stephen Timms, Theresa May, Tony Blair, UK, UK Government, UK immigration policy, UK student visa, vulnerable, Windrush, Windrush generation, Windrush Scandal

Animation Features Movies

True North

Director – Eiji Han Shimizu – 2020 – Japan, Indonesia – 93m

****

From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival

The life of an ordinary family living in Pyongyang is interrupted when their father disappears and their mother is unable to tell their infant son Yo-han and his younger sister Mi-hee exactly what has happened to him, although she reassures them that everything will be fine. A few days later, in the middle of the night, there’s a knock at the door of their apartment. Officials come in and search the place, make the family pack a few belongings then put them into a truck.

On the ensuing journey, there are no stops for the lavatory. The truck takes them to a political camp where they will be imprisoned although it’s never quite clear what offence they have committed. Father is apparently an enemy of the state, even though he appears to have an exemplary record. Despite promises that the family will see him soon, he’s not in the camp to which they’ve been taken. They are going to have to fend for themselves there.

Mother does her best to keep her kids’ spirits up – no mean task when you’re living on meagre rations and forced to do backbreaking work shifts harvesting crops in the fields (woman and girls) or working in the mines (men and boys).… Read the rest