Reviewed on 1st February at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival – World Documentary Competition, 101 Mins.
Cast: Jacinda Ardern
Genre: Documentary
Directors: Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe
In Irish Cinemas: 5th December 2025
This documentary portrays New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Ardern much as she appeared throughout her 2017–2023 leadership: unmistakably, even disarmingly, human. Few modern politicians have seemed so clearly like ordinary people suddenly propelled into high office before acquiring the usual layers of political armour. Her openness, transparent emotions, and unforced warmth set her dramatically apart from the cultivated inscrutability that defines so many of her contemporaries.
The film amplifies that impression, focusing intently on Ardern’s humanity rather than the machinery and machinations of party politics. One brief exchange near the end, however, breaks through the gentler tone. Her partner, Clarke Gayford, quietly questions whether she is taking on too much. Her quick, pointed reply—asking whether he’s suggesting she “delegate” becomes his Denis Thatcher moment, a tiny flash of the steel indispensable to any successful political figure.
Like Australia’s Julia Gillard, Ardern endured relentless misogyny, yet the documentary never depicts her becoming hardened or embittered by it. Granted unusually intimate access, the filmmakers accompany Gayford through her rapid rise: from an articulate, engaging Labour leader in 2017 to the world’s youngest elected female head of government only months later. She even gave birth while in office. Her response to the Christchurch mosque attacks, marked by genuine sorrow and resolute clarity, won global respect, particularly as she used that moment to push through a ban on assault rifles.
Then came Covid. At first, Ardern seemed to possess not only political acuity but the sort of luck Napoleon prized in his generals. New Zealand appeared almost miraculously insulated from the early devastation. But fortunes shifted: new outbreaks arrived, approval ratings fell, and an enraged far-right, anti-vaccine movement entrenched itself outside parliament. The film captures how some protesters seemed to relish the opportunity to intimidate a woman in power.
What remains is a wistful sense that contemporary politics is steadily losing space for leaders like Ardern, determined to remain recognizably human. In the current climate, that space feels narrower than ever.
Overall: 7/10
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