Sundance review: 'Prime Minister' presents a deeply personal portrait of Jacinda Ardern, as she led New Zealand and raised a baby
In politics as in documentary filmmaking, access is everything — and “Prime Minister” directors Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz get extraordinary access and use it to create a fascinating, emotional portrait of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
The main narrative runs from 2017, when Ardern suddenly ascended to the leadership of New Zealand’s Labour Party, just two months before a general election, to her somewhat surprise resignation in 2023. In between, Ardern faced and answered a series of crises that would humble any world leader.
She spoke at the United Nations in 2018, urging global cooperation in the face of Donald Trump’s isolationism. There was the mass shooting at a mosque in Christchurch in 2019, in which 50 people were killed — and prompted Ardern to become her country’s mourner-in-chief, and then push for a nationwide ban on assault weapons.
The biggest crisis came in 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic. Ardern oversaw a national shutdown, and closed her country’s borders — a move that, for awhile, allowed New Zealand to avoid the worst of the pandemic’s first wave. As the pandemic continued, Ardern led the efforts to get her citizens to get the vaccine, which caused a backlash from a minuscule but loud far-right protest movement, which unfurled misinformation and Trump flags in front of Parliament. (Of all the things the United States could export, why that?)
Oh, and just as she took office in 2017, Ardern found out she was pregnant. Her daughter, Neve, grows into the movie’s scene-stealer.
Walshe and Utz have footage from deep inside Ardern’s campaign, government and home life. Her then-partner, and now husband, broadcaster Clarke Gayford, started shooting footage on his phone when Ardern was named to lead the Labour Party, and kept getting the view from inside the house for years after. The film also had access to audio diaries Ardern recorded over the years, part of an oral history project that usually doesn’t release its clips until the subject dies. All told, the filmmakers said, they had 200 hours of material to comb through.
What Walshe and Utz produce is both expansive and intimate,covering not just Ardern’s politics but her personal side — from the security dangers the wing nut protesters put her family through to her deep interest in the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who serves as a metaphor for a leader making hard decisions to keep people alive.
“Prime Minister” presents a strong argument that the test of leadership isn’t what a leader plans to do, but what a leader does when the unexpected comes. Based on the evidence of history and this engaging documentary, Ardern clears the bar with room to spare.
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‘Prime Minister’
★★★1/2
Screening in the World Cinema Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Saturday, January 25, 4 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Sunday, January 26, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 5:45 p.m., Library, Park City; Friday, January 31, 4 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language snd mild breastfeeding scenes. Running time: 102 minutes.