When she became prime minister of New Zealand in 2017, Jacinda Ardern was the world’s youngest female head of state, at 37. From the start, she was playing on hard mode. After giving birth to a daughter not quite eight months later, she led her country through a series of generational catastrophes — shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, a deadly volcanic eruption, the Covid-19 pandemic — all while pushing a hefty set of progressive reforms through the legislature and getting re-elected, too.
The new documentary “Prime Minister” (in theaters) mostly covers this tumultuous period, showing how Ardern, the Labour Party leader at the time, navigated her choices while also giving space to her misgivings. But it’s not a biopic or a puff piece. It’s more of a memoir: a bigger story told through the events of one person’s life. That tale goes far beyond Ardern, even beyond New Zealand.
The directors Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe drew on a variety of sources. There’s footage from 2024, with Ardern teaching as a fellow at Harvard and working on her new book, “A Different Kind of Power.” But that’s just the framing device. The bulk of “Prime Minister” leans on video that her husband, Clarke Gayford, shot during Ardern’s time in office, including intimate glimpses of her home life and private thoughts, as well as audio interviews that haven’t been previously released.
The result can be uncommonly frank. Ardern talks about reluctant governing and impostor syndrome. Her political journey, she says, has been a battle between two parts of herself, “the one that says that you can’t and the one that says that you have to.” She speaks her mind but is also in tune with her emotions. You can hear her voice crack when she contemplates the grieving families of the people slain in the Christchurch massacre, or considers the implications of pandemic lockdown policies on children who depend on school for food and women who will face domestic violence in isolation.
Her greatest fury — leading to her burnout — comes when protesters set up camp on the Parliament lawn in 2022. Their target was vaccine mandates, though there’s plenty of sexism mixed into their speeches, too. But what Ardern (and many others) saw in their slogans was evidence that Trump-style rhetoric and misinformation from American news media sources and conspiracists had reached into New Zealand. At one point, she notes that some protesters were repeatedly insisting that the government “keep their hands off children” — yet youngsters under 12 weren’t part of the New Zealand vaccine mandates. Layering in radio broadcasts featuring callers expressing disgust with the protests, the film makes the case that this small but loud group was driven by fabrications from elsewhere but grabbed outsize space in headlines nonetheless.
And that’s the sticky part. Ardern frequently talks about “New Zealand values” and the need for her country to run differently. Yet placing the protests near the end of the film — shortly before Ardern decides to resign — makes a bigger point clear. Governing in an interconnected world like ours, where the media machinations beamed in from thousands of miles away can affect citizens’ perceptions of their own reality, presents an unprecedented challenge. It’s hard to get people to see what’s happening around them when those screens are so alluring and the voices are so unrelenting. And, “Prime Minister” reminds us, the role that the internet and sharply ideological news sources play in our lives shifted dramatically in just the years Ardern was in office.
That’s an issue no single politician can solve. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. The film ends with Ardern holding firmly to her belief that a different way of governing, one suffused with kindness and compassion, is not just possible but essential if civilization is to endure. Idealistic? Yes. But in 2025, coming from someone who has more than earned the right to hold to her ideals, it feels radical, too.
Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005.
The post ‘Prime Minister’ Examines a New Zealand Leader and a Global Issue appeared first on New York Times.
