A little over two years after being sworn in as prime minister of New Zealand, and after navigating the aftermath of a domestic terror attack at two mosques and a deadly volcanic eruption, Jacinda Ardern committed to being more zen.
But just a couple of months later, she found herself essentially closing New Zealand off from the rest of the world and implementing lockdowns across the country as a pandemic threatened the well-being of her citizens.
As portrayed in “Prime Minister,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, that sort of whiplash was a recurring theme throughout Ardern’s time as prime minister — and it was present in her life even before she assumed that leadership position.
Ardern didn’t become the leader of the Labour Party until about seven weeks before the general election in the fall of 2017. She took on the role after an unexpected resignation.
Around the same time, Ardern discovered she was pregnant. At 37, she became only the second elected leader in the world to give birth while in office.
On the surface, Ardern’s life, including her career, seemed to involve a constant game of tug and pull, a struggle between opposing forces.
But what makes “Prime Minister” such a fascinating watch is that Ardern treats all of this contrast as two sides of the same coin.
Raising a daughter while in office seems to inform Ardern’s leadership, and vice versa.
“You shouldn’t have to trade off a fulfilling career and also a fulfilling family life,” Ardern told the Deseret News before the world premiere of her documentary. “But that does mean that we all need help, we all need a village. ... We have that old mantra that women can do it all, sure, but they shouldn’t do it alone.”
In “Prime Minister,” Ardern appears to be intent on maintaining optimism and making informed decisions with compassion and kindness. But that doesn’t mean her policies come without any resistance.
With the use of archival footage, audio diaries and present-day interviews, “Prime Minister” takes viewers through Ardern’s personal and public life during her tumultuous years as New Zealand’s leader, her unexpected resignation and beyond.
‘I could only be myself’
When Ardern was named head of the Labour Party, New Zealand’s general election was just a few weeks away. This didn’t give her much time to curate an image in the public eye.
“I could only be myself,” she says in “Prime Minister.”
That no-frills approach is part of what made “Prime Minister” director Michelle Walshe want to take on the documentary.
“Seeing her being so unapologetically exactly who she was, a young mother with a young baby, and she brought that to her job without trying to become something else, was really inspiring,” Walshe told the Deseret News at the film’s premiere, noting her belief that it’s a style of leadership needed everywhere, not just in politics. “I’ve taken that through into everything I do.”
“Prime Minister” marks Walshe’s Sundance debut, and it was important to her, she said, to show “an authentic story” — one that highlighted the struggles and sacrifices, and the massive amount of support Ardern needed as she navigated the role of prime minister as a first-time mom.
“Prime Minister” puts a spotlight not just on the former prime minister, but also the love and care of Ardern’s husband, TV broadcaster Clarke Gayford, who carried their daughter, Neve, around the office so that Ardern could breastfeed before and after meetings, and in the backseat of cars (following the film’s premiere, Gayford received a lot of applause from the Sundance audience for his continual support of Ardern).
Because of her determination to breastfeed, Ardern brought her then-3-month-old to a United Nations general assembly meeting, holding her until she had to get up and give a speech.
Through home video footage shot by Gayford, who is a producer on the documentary, we see Ardern eventually reach the conclusion that the demands of her job made it unfeasible to stick with breastfeeding.
A few years later, about a year before her resignation, Ardern is shown at home, talking on the phone about the protests that have formed on Parliament’s lawn over her COVID-19 mandates. The situation has become increasingly violent, and the threats against her family have intensified.
As the phone call continues, Ardern looks at her young daughter, who is seemingly carefree as she eats porridge nearby. The physical toll this all has taken on Ardern is palpable.
“Prime Minister” co-director Lindsey Utz — a longtime film editor known for her work on Sundance hits like the Oscar-winning “American Factory” and “Miss Americana” — said getting to know Ardern, and working on the documentary as a mom of two, shifted her own perspective on motherhood.
“It made me feel less guilty about having a career, because the truth is that you do spend less time with your kids and that’s hard and there’s a lot of guilt that comes with that,” Utz told the Deseret News. “But it’s also important for your kids to see you pursuing your dreams and your passions and having a career. I think women are constantly struggling with that guilt, and the fact that (Ardern) was just so open about how much it took for her to be able to do this job and all the support that she needed, made me feel less alone in my own struggles.”
Ardern had a lot of support as she navigated crisis after crisis as prime minister while embracing motherhood. But even still, the cumulative effect of the challenges she faced while in office took a toll on her, ultimately leading to a surprise resignation.
A ‘reluctant prime minister’
As Ardern tells it, she was always a bit of a “reluctant prime minister.”
Early on in the documentary, she recalls how she initially didn’t want Andrew Little, the previous leader of the Labour Party, to resign. She feared having all of the responsibility land on her shoulders.
But she took on the role with confidence, and throughout her time as prime minister, Ardern championed issues including gun control, climate change, child poverty reduction, raised minimum wage, paid parental leave and mental health.
“Prime Minister” doesn’t get too deep into the weeds of her policies. Instead, it’s more reflective as it puts more of the focus on her responses to situations — some of her thought processes and the considerations that went into her decisions.
Near the end of the documentary, in a present-day interview, Ardern wonders if she had maybe subconsciously been planning her exit all along. At the time of her resignation, her favor in the polls had declined significantly. She figured that if she stepped down and removed herself from the equation, perhaps some of her accomplishments wouldn’t be overturned.
The political climate in New Zealand was also intensifying, and Ardern believed the temperature needed to cool down.
But in the documentary, she still stands behind her handling of the pandemic, noting that she would prefer to explain why she did too much rather than too little.
“Save people’s lives and keep everyone together,” she said of her responsibilities. “I did one, but I didn’t quite manage to do the other.”
So Ardern resigned at the start of 2023, after a little more than five years as prime minister. She looked forward to spending more time with family, married Gayford and became a dual fellow at Harvard.
Now, with the premiere of “Prime Minister” and a memoir coming out later this year, Ardern is working hard to spread a message of compassion and optimism.
‘Kindness and empathy in leadership’
Following the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, Ardern was widely praised for her empathy-driven leadership — and her refusal to state the shooter’s name in an effort to shed more light on the victims.
In the aftermath of the shootings, President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints met with Ardern and stated that she was “a real leader.”
“It’s an unlikely scenario — a young mother leading a great nation, a peacemaker, a policymaker, consensus giver," Nelson said. “We’re very impressed with her. She’ll have a great future.”
Ardern’s compassionate approach to leadership feels rare in an increasingly divisive society, “Prime Minister” co-director Utz told the Deseret News. And it was applauded at Sundance.
The film got a standing ovation, and Ardern received a standing ovation when she took the stage for a brief Q&A that felt more like a pep talk as she spoke about building respect with your fellow citizens, even when you may disagree with one another.
“Optimism is a courageous act,” she told the cheering crowd at the Eccles Theatre in Park City. “It’s not passive, you have to keep fighting for it. ... You have to act on its behalf. Please maintain the courage of optimism, we need it now more than ever.”
At one point during the Q&A, Ardern joked that running a country and filming a documentary sometimes didn’t feel all too different. There were moments in “Prime Minister” when Gayford was filming her and she didn’t seem particularly interested in being filmed.
In the end, the “Prime Minister” directors said they had around 200 hours of footage — the rough cut of their film was 17 hours.
“I think it’s really important that when you’re doing something like this you don’t think so much about having to sit and watch the end product, because I think anyone watching themselves on screen finds it probably quite difficult,” Ardern told the Deseret News. “But I think this is a moment in time. We’re just sharing the importance of kindness and empathy in leadership, and if one way to do that was by bearing all, showing what our lives were like, then that was worth it.”