The film includes footage shot by Clarke Gayford, the husband of the former New Zealand prime minister. A documentary traversing former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s leadership and personal life through home videos, archival footage and fresh interviews has premiered at Sundance.
![[Clarke Gayford and Jacinda Ardern ‘Prime Minister’ premiere, Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, USA - 24 Jan 2025]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7530f869f7d182849afc94dc45dfa162890fce03/0_0_4800_2881/master/4800.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The film, Prime Minister, directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz covers Ardern’s five-year tenure, after her abrupt ascension to leader of the Labour party in 2017, just six weeks out from an election her party was widely expected to lose. On a wave of popularity dubbed “Jacindamania”, the then-37-year-old led the party to victory, becoming the world’s then-youngest ever female leader.
Speaking to the Sundance audience, Ardern said she hoped the film would help humanise people in leadership. “[The film-makers] took the opportunity to tell the whole story – the highs, the lows, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”. Ardern’s shock win was quickly followed by a succession of head-turning events, including becoming the world’s second leader to give birth while in office and grappling with national crises including the country’s worst terror attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ardern’s brand of politics, which repeatedly emphasised the values of empathy, humanity and kindness, catapulted her into a global icon of the left. Towards the end of her time in office, Ardern’s legacy at home became more complicated, and she faced criticism over her government’s failure to make headway on its promises to fix the housing crisis and meaningfully reduce emissions. As the pandemic wore on, a small but vocal fringe of anti-vaccine and anti-mandate groups emerged, leading to a violent protest on parliament’s lawns and threatening rhetoric directed at Ardern.
