“Prime Minister”: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Leader Who Champions Kindness

“It’s quite a lot to watch yourself on a screen,” says The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern to audience laughter at the post-premiere Q&A of Prime Minister at Eccles Theatre on January 24 in Park City, Utah. Premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, this film co-directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz gives the audience unprecedented access to Dame Jacinda’s thoughts and feelings, both at work and at home with her family, during her tenure as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023. 

(L–R) Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, and The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Prime Minister” at Eccles Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by George Pimentel/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)

In addition to showing her addressing monumental crises in her office — the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings and the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 to name a couple — the documentary features home footage shot by her now-husband, broadcaster Clarke Gayford. “When I suddenly found myself in a position we didn’t expect, he just decided to capture it,” says Dame Jacinda of her swift rise from member of Parliament to prime minister in 2017. “We had no plan or thought on what might happen.” 

“That was the same reason I started the audio diaries as well,” she continues, referring to her participation in the National Library of New Zealand’s Political Diary Oral History Project. Her audio diaries from the project also appear in the film, though permission to include them came as a surprise to Walshe. “They don’t normally get released until after somebody dies. As a documentarian, your jaw drops to the floor when you have access to somebody’s intimate thoughts that they never expected were gonna be released.”

Presented all together, the footage of Dame Jacinda simultaneously humanizes the world leader and confirms what many people already knew — that she was extraordinarily effective in her policies and that she valued optimism and kindness the whole way, even through her difficult decision to resign from her position.

But some audiences may be surprised to learn that Dame Jacinda has spent much of her life keeping impostor syndrome at bay. “I think when you’re in public service, you decide that you’re going to put all of yourself out there,” she tells the audience during the Q&A. “I think one of the gaps at the moment, though, is we don’t see all of it when people are in leadership.” No one documentary could show all of it (“the good, the bad, and the ugly,” recites Dame Jacinda), but Prime Minister definitely lets us in on some almost disarmingly casual moments, like the prime minister feeding her daughter — whom she gave birth to while she held office — or sitting in bed with a stack of paperwork. 

The intimate onscreen moments extend to vulnerable scenes in the office, such as the 2022 Wellington protest, when anti-mandate and anti-lockdown protesters occupied — and trashed — the grounds of Parliament House. Dame Jacinda’s willingness to show the world her emotions during this time demonstrates that acknowledging fear, sadness, and anxiety is part of strong leadership. “I’d never seen somebody lead unapologetically with kindness and humanity just exactly as she was,” says Walshe of Dame Jacinda. “I just felt so privileged to shine a light on that kind of leadership, which we need everywhere, not just in politics.”

Though she no longer holds the title of prime minister, Dame Jacinda is continuing to lead by example, and the audience at the Eccles Theatre is keen to glean some parting words of wisdom as they express concern about the polarized nature of politics in the U.S. today. 

“For me, the question isn’t so much one purely about politics, but it’s about how we engage with one another, how we debate when we have different views, how we build respect and consensus when we need it,” she explains. “And that is what we also have to keep fighting for. We have to look for ways to foster that again because all of those big challenges that we have in the world, we will not overcome unless we build consensus with one another rather than a war with one another.

“This situation and time is not unique to one country,” she continues. “For some reason, we have managed to silo ourselves more deeply, in a more entrenched way than we ever have before. But I absolutely believe that we will find our way out of it again. And I believe it because I saw the most horrific times, the most dark and difficult times, and through it, those were the times when I saw beautiful lights of humanity as well. It is there, we just have to make sure we amplify it, we give it space, we foster it, and we have the courage to grow, as well.”