‘Prime Minister’ Review: New Zealand Leader Jacinda Ardern Works Through Crisis in an Intimate but Simplistic Documentary
variety.comSiddhant Adlakha World leaders have rarely been captured with as much intimacy as in Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz’s “Prime Minister.” While the duo — whose credits include “Chasing Great” and “American Factory” respectively — are its ultimate architects, the shape the movie takes is largely owed to Clarke Gayford, partner and eventual husband to the doc’s subject, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Gayford’s proximity is a double-edged sword, one the rest of the production also wields, in terms of its limited political approach.
However, as a portrait of struggles in the seat of power, the film presses all the right emotional buttons. Ardern was the Prime Minister from 2017 to early 2023 — perhaps the most challenging premiership in New Zealand’s history.
The films spans her entire term, plus a few months on either side as bookends, chronicling her tumultuous tenure through the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more on variety.com
