Prime Minister – Movie Review - Fremantle Shipping News

Last Saturday, my movie buddy and I headed to Luna at Leederville to watch a preview of Prime Minister – a documentary film covering former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden’s leadership and personal life.

Directors Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz covered Arden’s five-year tenure using home videos, archival footage and interviews.

At 37 years old, Arden became the world’s youngest-ever female leader. It was 2017, and the New Zealand Labour Party was expected to lose. Arden was unprepared for the role, experienced ‘imposter syndrome’ and severe anxiety over her shock win.

We rarely get to know much about our leaders’ personal lives. The filmmakers told the ‘whole’ story in this documentary – the highs and lows, the good, the bad and the ugly – using intimate home footage shot by Arden’s partner, Clarke Gayford. These videos and audio interviews completed by Jacinda while in office give us an unfiltered window into her years in power.

Shortly after becoming prime minister, Jacinda announced her pregnancy; this unleashed a huge backlash against feminists and working mothers. She was accused of being a show-pony. There are candid clips of a very pregnant Jacinda, at home surrounded by papers, fearful how she could be a mother and a prime minister at the same time. She would become the second head of state in history to give birth while in office.

She overcame sexist barriers and lead New Zealand with her brand of leadership, founded on kindness and empathy.

She came to global attention—being a prime minister and having a baby at the same time was unheard of. She admitted that she wasn’t a super-mum, and was honest about the difficulties with breast feeding her daughter Neve and working at the same time. Her partner Clark and her family were hugely supportive; otherwise she couldn’t have done it.

We saw her at the UN in New York attempting to breastfed her young baby. She looked like any other new breastfeeding mother, hollow-eyed and exhausted.

She grappled with the country’s worst terrorist attack. In 2019, gunmen opened fire on a Christchurch Mosque. Twenty-nine members of the Muslin community died and over fifty people were injured. Jacinda displayed amazing values of empathy, kindness and grief. She led the nation’s mourning with great sensitivity and rushed through gun control laws in a matter of weeks.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, and she copped huge flak for her decisions to close New Zealand to save lives. As the pandemic wore on, she faced huge criticism from anti-vaxxers and anti-mandate groups emerged. Violent protests on Parliament’s lawns made worldwide news.

During her tenure as prime minister, she never changed her values, or became tough or nasty. Her vulnerability proved not a flaw but a strength.

The cracks began to appear as she faced criticism over the failure to make headway to fix housing and other issues. It’s not hard to understand how she eventually burnt out. Jacinda shocked New Zealanders in January 2023 when she resigned saying she ‘no longer had enough in the tank’.

With Trump-style politics in our faces, I wonder have we gone backwards? I believe we need more of Jacinda Arden’s brand of politics: leaders, male and female, who lead with kindness and humanity. I felt this documentary was genuine and heartfelt.

Screening at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX, and the Windsor from 6 November.

I score this documentary film 9 out of 10.

*By Jean Hudson

Jean Hudson is our Shipping and Sailing Correspondent and also a regular feature writer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may also like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.

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