For the better part of the last century, the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand has been collecting interviews with people of historical consequence, identifying early that Jacinda Ardern would be such a person upon being elected as a deputy leader in the Labour Party in 2017. The oral history project would require her to keep a running diary of her thoughts, affording her the luxury of being as candid as she wanted to be when the record of them wouldn’t be made public for decades later and she continued to record even after the surprise resignation of the party’s top leader Andrew Little just five months into the job, putting her in pole position to become Prime Minister. It wasn’t only the Turnbull Library that suspected Arden’s date with destiny, but also her then-fiance, now husband Clarke Gayford, a broadcaster by trade who decided to dust off the camera he had at home as Ardern was about to make history as just the third female head of state for the country and only the second in the world to serve while pregnant.
“Prime Minister” would be remarkable for the fact alone that Ardern gave permission for a film to be made out of all that intimate material that was collected during her tenure from 2017 to 2023, offering a look at governance from a perspective that’s generally impossible to come by, but in the hands of Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, it somehow becomes even more extraordinary. Not only does the film capture Ardern rising to the challenge of a particularly turbulent time in office, contending with both the COVID lockdown and the Christchurch Massacre, which led to a nationwide ban on assault weapons, but Walshe and Utz do justice to both the rare access and the one-of-a-kind subject they have on their hands with an inspired approach, playing back recordings of Ardern speaking about her experience in the moment it happened and reflecting on it now.
“There’s this one part in the film you see where she’s talking in present tense about the very beginnings of COVID and she stops in real time with us, and she’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just feel so sorry for myself,’ and you just realized you’re watching a world leader reflect on their time at the very beginning of what was going to be one of the biggest and most difficult crises in modern history,” Walshe recalled recently. “That was just such an incredible moment to witness in real time and we hoped that it would resonate on film in the same way.”
Although politicians are known to say decisions are never easy, “Prime Minister” shows how wrenching they truly are at times for Ardern, who is presented as the ultimate diplomat in public, but privately harbors plenty of doubts. Yet the uncertainty only makes her look stronger as she weighs the length of a pandemic lockdown that ended far earlier in New Zealand than the rest of the world out of an abundance of caution, and glimpses into her family life show the foundation for her convictions and in many ways how she can withstand the whirlwind she faces constantly in her work. With both the inspiration of Ardern’s example and a breakneck pace to match her relentless schedule while in office, the film is exhilarating and deservedly took home an Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Now as “Prime Minister” rolls out around the country theatrically, Walshe and Utz generously took the time to talk about how their cross-continental partnership formed for this profile in courage and expressing that having impact on the world stage can start at home.
Michelle Walshe: We collecting footage over years and when Jacinda resigned, we finally got to a point where we said, “Hey, I think we could make a documentary. We wanted an international perspective and we were lucky that through Madison Wells, who financed the film, they introduced us to Lindsay and Lindsay and I have just had this great, amazing experience of coming together from different sides of the world to tell a story that we think is really important and resonates across the world and outside of politics.
Lindsay Utz: Yeah, obviously I had admired Jacinda from afar for many, many years and took note after she banned guns and then her leadership during COVID. I really admired her and when she stepped down, I felt a real sadness. So fast forward, I got a phone call that there was some footage that existed of her time in office and my mind was blown. I only had to see about two minutes of the raw material to know that this was something I wanted to come on board and help bring to life. And it was amazing to get to know all of these Kiwis, who I now consider family. We just understood that we were making something much larger than ourselves, so it was really two countries, two teams that came together to bring the movie to life.
Where do you even start with a film like this? Was a lot of it already in the footage?
Michelle Walshe: We’re very lucky that Clarke [Gayford, Jacinda’s partner] filmed a heck of a lot of footage. My husband, Leon Kirkbeck, who’s one of the cinematographers and a producer on the film, was there for over many years in different times, capturing some really intimate, incredible footage and then the gold was when we found out that Jacinda had been recording these really intimate audio diaries every two weeks for the Alexander Turnbull Library History Project. They weren’t supposed to be released until she died and she gave us access to them, so Lindsay and the incredible editing team came to just had to tackle it in L.A.
Lindsay Utz: When Michelle and I heard these audio diaries, we were blown away because you really get to hear her emotion in the moment, so we decided to use that as a narrative device and we were lucky that Jacinda was here in the States after her resignation, so Michelle and I were able to spend time with her in Boston and shoot. We wanted to talk to her about everything she went through. And we were lucky because she was writing her memoir at the time, so she was in this very reflective place when we interviewed her. We used the audio diaries as a device to go back in time and we didn’t know if that was going to work, but it ended up working. Our first cut was like a crude 17-hour chunky thing, but we just [thought], “I think this could work.” We wanted this story in the past to play in a propulsive way, almost as if you’re watching a cinema verite film about her time in office, but then we it’s grounded in her voice and her reflection. But we never wanted the audience to be taken out of the experience of being with her over those five years while she’s in office. Achieving that balance was tricky and took time, but hats off to our edit team, Grace Zahrah and Enat Sidi, two amazing documentary film editors and good friends of mine who I was just thrilled to be able to bring on board to help craft this movie with us.
Was it interesting perhaps to get to know her through the footage first and then subsequently in person?
Lindsay Utz: Oh my God. The first time I got to meet her, we had lunch in Culver City and it was early on when we were talking about the project and I was essentially interviewing for the job. She was incredible, and I had imposter syndrome that I was even sitting across from her. And she talks about imposter syndrome. And it was really exciting for me because for many years I’ve worked as an editor, but I’m a very curious person and I’m a people person. I love being out in the world, so it was really thrilling to me to actually get to be in the field, to spend time with her, to build a relationship. And she really is just as lovely in person as she is on screen. That is who she is, so it was a real joy.
Michelle Walshe: Yeah. I’ve obviously known her for a very long time, before she became prime minister, but the first time I met her, even then she just had this incredible magnetic energy and you could tell there was something extraordinary. She was leading with her values first. Then of course, when she had a baby in office, she just turned up as a mother without making apologies for bringing a baby into the office. So I had a really different experience in that way from Lindsay, but as a documentarian, when you look at the footage for what it is and you can only work with what you have on screen, so there is a real process between parsing the person that you know and working with the material that you have.
Lindsay Utz: We had all this incredibly intimate footage, but we knew that footage wouldn’t land unless you understood what was happening around her, so we had to brush stroke in the world using news archive and talkback radio to give you the full picture of what she was experiencing. That was like phase two, [where we had] our interviews with her on some of the key moments during her administration, and then build this archive world around it as well. It did take time to figure out the balance because we never wanted the film to veer into debating her policies or getting too deep in the weeds of the political stuff because really this is a personal story. This is a journey of a woman during a period of time and we wanted the film to transcend politics.
It was always super important to us as we were putting the movie together. Like, if we ever veered away from her for too long or felt emotionally too far from her, then we had to lean back in. I call it the accordion process where a cut is long, then it gets shorter, then it gets longer, then it gets shorter and you just have to find the right ingredients in the right order. We don’t work with scripts. That’s all figured out in the edit room and it was a huge collaboration between so many talented people to kind of crack it. But it was very, very much designed to take you on a ride and be over before you want it to be over.
Michelle Walshe: Yeah, I think our primary goal was we wanted to show that politicians and leaders are human. And obviously leaning into more into the more intimate side of her life was really important, because that’s we don’t normally see that. It was incredibly privileged access. But the other thing about Jacinda is she is very funny. She has the quickest wit of nearly anyone I know. And I think it was really important for us to show that side of her. We also really wanted to show the dynamic at home between her and Clark. So it was more about taking the cover off what a politician or a leader is and finding underneath a human just like us.
How did the Ernest Shackleton story that she told herself for inspiration and now shares with audiences about leaving no one behind come into the mix?
Lindsay Utz: Yeah, she mentioned Shackleton in one of our earliest shoots in California, and we started digging into that and realized that Ernest Shackleton is really one of her heroes and somebody she admires so deeply. Of course, that incredible footage that Frank Hurley captured during the [Antarctic] expedition, the fact that it even exists and looks that beautiful is mindblowing to me, so we played with this idea of if we could weave it in as a way to give you backstory on what inspires her in a way that’s not like traditional backstory and hang some larger ideas on it — the idea of optimism, of pushing through, of training yourself to imagine that things are possible — so it became a way for us to poetically bring in some of these larger themes.
We also love that Jacinda is a history lover. The reason she did the audio recordings is because she believes in documentation. The reason she let Clarke film her is because she knew deep down that maybe one day this would be important for somebody to see. So the layers upon layers of documentation, just with Frank Hurley’s footage, with the oral history project, with Clarke’s footage, we just thought there was something beautiful in this idea of capturing really important things and sharing them with the world. That’s why we did it. But it was a very tricky thing because to go to black-and-white footage in a movie like this is a bold choice. And there were lots of cuts where it was not working. It took us a while to kind of figure out the three beats [where the Shackleton footage shows up] in the film, but it was tricky because you didn’t want to feel like you were going on a detour to another movie.
You would never know from the final product. It was so elegantly done.
Lindsay Utz: It was hard. But I’m glad there were, there was a moment in time where I was like, maybe we should just kill Shackleton because…
Michelle Walshe: We literally had that conversation a week before.
Lindsay Utz: Because when you can’t get something to work, you’re like, “Maybe it doesn’t belong…” But credit to one of our editors Enat who walked us off the ledge there and reminded us that it was working and it was good.
What’s it like to start getting the film out into the world now?
Lindsay Utz: It’s been incredible. When you’re working on a movie for so long, you’re in the details of the movie and you’re emotionally detached from it at a certain point because you’re just trying to make it work and finish it. But then when you start to share it with audiences, you have a different perspective on it. Since Sundance, we’ve taken it around to a number of festivals and every time people are really, really moved by the movie, especially women. We have women coming up to us after the film who are on the verge of tears and can barely speak. It’s touching something deep within them and I think in the States at this moment in time, people are desperate to see an alternative version of leadership, something that feels human driven by empathy and by a desire to take care of people, not hurt people. So it’s really stirring up a lot of emotions in audiences and it’s really been moving to us to see the film resonate in that way.
Has this played at home yet, Michelle?
Michelle Walshe: Well, it’s going to be playing in the New Zealand International Film Festival and this week it’s opening up in a theater with 2000 people in Sydney and I’m Australian, so all my family and friends will be there, which will be an incredible honor to be back at home with a film that’s so important. The Australian audience is very excited. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how it’s received in the U.S. I lived there and had to move in basically 48 hours during COVID to come home, so the U.S. is very close to my heart and I know that there’s a lot of people there that are struggling with the leadership styles that we’re witnessing right now. I feel really lucky to be a part of something that might shine some light on a different way that we can lead and govern our people and provide some hope.
“Prime Minister” opens in limited release on June 13th.