Reviews: '2000 Meters To Andriivka,' 'André Is An Idiot,' & 'Prime Minister'
My first day of virtually covering the 2025 Sundance Film Festival brings reviews of three documentaries reminding us to live and perform to the fullest, with joy, valor, and integrity, for our time here is limited, but the world goes on without us.
Prime Minister (2025)
Many people view living to the fullest and freest as their right, and it’s too bad if anyone impacted by their choices is harmed. That’s the apparent thinking of anti-vaxxers and protestors against any government-mandated imposition such as masks and lockdowns during a pandemic. They’d rather die and have been free than live with restrictions, even temporarily. What they don’t understand is that this kind of freedom restricts the freedoms of others. There’s no such thing as absolute free will because other people’s choices can override our choices.
That’s not really what Prime Minister is about. However, after watching two documentaries about people confronting death on their own terms, I continued to think about the idea during this third film. There’s a segment involving COVID-19 and why public opposition against New Zealand’s policies during the pandemic — protests over which included their equivalent of January 6, at their parliament building in 2023 — led to the resignation of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. These right-wing, Trump-inspired Kiwis didn’t care about other people dying of the virus or being hurt by the violence of their activism and their threatening words. So long as they weren’t inconvenienced by feeling less than free.
Directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz (an excellent editor who makes her feature directorial debut here), Prime Minister follows Ardern from the beginning to the end of her service in the titular leadership role — 2017 to 2023. The relatively low-key profile of a documentary chronicles all her achievements through several obstacles, including having her first child at the start of her first term and dealing with such tragedies as the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks and the Whakaari/White Island volcano eruption the same year. Then came COVID, which changed her momentum. She should still be remembered for her accomplishments, such as the legalization of abortion, stricter gun control laws, and perhaps even her initially successful plan to save as many lives during the pandemic as possible.
Of course, as is expected in democracies, some of Ardern’s policies are being overturned by the current administration, led by the opposing party, but that shouldn’t alter the legacy of what she got done while in office. Prime Minister makes the position, and any similar highest job of any land, seem like a lifespan of sorts. Consider everything that happened from 2017 to 2023 as representing that life, and the resignation being a kind of departure from that life. Ardern shows throughout the documentary that while working that job and living that life, she was going to make the most of it. Even so, generally, she seems to have put the lives of others, as in all New Zealanders, ahead of her own. At least in the documentary, she is portrayed as a completely selfless leader, running on empathy. It’s unfortunate that so many didn’t see that she performed in the best interests of her country and its citizens.
