‘Prime Minister,’ Starring New Zealand’s Dynamic Former Leader Jacinda Ardern, Prepares For Ballot Of Oscar Doc Branch Voters

Who was the biggest star at the 2025 edition of Sundance? Jennifer Lopez, perhaps? Oscar winners Olivia Colman, Daniel Kaluuya? Maybe Sarah Jessica Parker, Rose Byrne or singer-actor Sara Bareilles.

Based on the gaga reaction of crowds on the street and at screenings, I would argue a star of the political world attracted the most enthusiasm, by a landslide: former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The PM, who resigned from office in January 2023, came to Sundance for the world premiere of a documentary about her aptly titled Prime Ministerdirected by Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe.

“We could not move anywhere without being stopped,” Utz recalls of their Sundance experience, noting that Ardern’s husband, the handsome and telegenic Clarke Gayford, turned plenty of heads as well.

The film, which recently premiered on CNN and is now streaming on HBO Max as well as CNN’s streaming service, charts Ardern’s unlikely ascent to the leadership of her country at the age of 37. She became Labor Party chief in 2017 after her predecessor abruptly resigned following the release of a grim public opinion poll that painted a dire picture of the party’s chances in the next general election. Ardern was elected party leader, but without the usual grooming that takes place to shape a potential leader’s image.

“I think what Jacinda did was show up unapologetically as herself,” Utz observed at a recent Q&A in Los Angeles. “She says that at the beginning of the film, nobody ever told her, ‘We’re going to focus group [you]we’re going to poll, you’ve got to be this way, you’ve got to be that way.’ She didn’t even know she was going to be the prime minister. So, she was really thrust into this, and she had no other choice but to be herself.”

That authenticity appealed to New Zealand voters, who defied expectations to keep the Labor Party in power, making Ardern the PM. She formally took office in October 2017, becoming the youngest world leader at the time. Her then-partner (now husband) Clarke began documenting Ardern as she rose to the upper echelons of power.

“In 2017, when I became the leader of the Labor Party, he just picked up his phone one day and started filming,” Ardern told Deadline at Sundance. “And we didn’t talk about why or what would happen with that. I think we both knew that we were on a journey that we didn’t know where it would lead, and it felt important to capture. So, as much as you can see in the film that I was relatively reluctant some of the time, I’m glad that he did.”

Crises would test Ardern in office. On March 15, 2019, a gunman unleashed a horrifying terror attack on a mosque and an Islamic center in Christchurch, killing 51 people. She helped her nation grieve, and soon resolved in a public address, “Our gun laws will change.” Ardern made that happen and then, a year later, the PM as well as leaders everywhere faced the devastating outbreak of Covid.

“She’s somebody that I had admired from afar for many, many years. I first took notice of her when she passed the gun legislation and just her handling of the Christchurch massacre was so moving,” Utz noted. “And then of course during the pandemic, I was desperate for science-based leadership, and I remember CNN and MSNBC were airing her briefings on cable news and I would tune in to watch her briefings to try to get some information.”

She got high marks for keeping New Zealand’s infection rate very low, and yet as the film shows, a backlash eventually developed against her. Anti-vaxxers and New Zealand’s version of MAGA went on the attack. Ardern not only faced the usual challenges before any leader of a country but handled those crises and the political backlash while raising a child. She gave birth to a daughter, Neve, in 2018, becoming only the second world leader to have a baby while in office (the late Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s prime minister, being the first).

In January 2023, Ardern surprised supporters by stepping down from power. She would later accept a fellowship teaching at Harvard, where filmmakers Walshe and Utz conducted interviews with her for the documentary.

“I think she was really burnt out. She went through a lot, that’s a lot to have to handle after just having a baby,” Utz observed. “She says, ‘There’s not enough fuel in the tank,’ and that’s true. But I also think she was ready to just move on to other things.”

Earlier this year, Ardern accepted an appointment to Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government as a Distinguished Fellow and member of the World Leaders Circle. And at the beginning of the year she published a memoir, A Different Kind of Power. The title refers to Ardern’s belief in a style of politics vastly different, from say, Donald Trump’s.

“She put her values of kindness and empathy before everything else. That’s what guided her,” Walshe told Deadline at Sundance. “That felt just so liberating for us as other female leaders, like, oh, we don’t have to fill up gaps that we thought we had because we are not men. We can just lead with the traits that are probably more naturally female.”

The film, which is in contention for the Academy Awards, opens in the UK on Friday. With Jacinda, Clarke and Neve now based there, it will afford the opportunity to do more Q&As with the former prime minister – who promises to be as much of a draw in Britain as she was at Sundance.

“They really are as lovely in person as they are in the film,” Utz said of Ardern and Gayford, “so I’m excited to see them because you form an attachment with your subjects after you make these kinds of films. So, I’m looking forward to seeing them and looking forward to seeing Neve.”

Little Neve, it seems, has inherited her mother’s gift for retail politics. Grace Zahrah, who edited the documentary along with Enat Sidi, recalled her introduction to the PM’s daughter, then perhaps age 5 or 6.

“When I first met Neve, she looked at me and she said, ‘You look very familiar. I’ve seen you somewhere before,’” Zahrah recalled at the LA Q&A. “She’s very smart. She’s so smart. And when we left, she said, ‘I hope I see you again.’”

“We tried to keep a lot of that in the movie when Neve walks around and is shaking people’s hands in the office,” Utz added. “It was really important to us to keep that humor alive throughout the film. For me, the best films take you on a ride and it’s like you feel happy, you feel sad, you feel joy, you feel, like, trauma and this story kind of had it all. So, it was just really important to us to create that experience for the audience.”