covid – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

PRIME MINISTER – Review by Loren King

June 4, 2025June 7, 2025 Loren King Clarke Gayford, covid, gun control, Jacinda Ardern, Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, new zealand, Prime Minister

Prime Minister is eye opening, engaging and also depressing. To hear former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern routinely use words like kindness, compassion and empathy when advocating for policy or talking about leadership left me disheartened that in the currently deeply divided, disinformation-inundated United States, such a leader could never be elected. Prime Minister is more than a powerful portrait of a singular leader. It’s also a devastating look at politics in the world today.

Reviews

PRIME MINISTER – Review by Leslie Combemale

June 4, 2025June 6, 2025 Leslie Combemale Clarke Gayford, covid, gun control, Jacinda Ardern, Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, new zealand, Prime Minister, roe v wade

Is watching a leader that is the diametrically opposite of Donald Trump going to bring you despair, or optimism, or both? That’s the question that will likely pop up for viewers of the documentary Prime Minister, from co-directors Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe. The film chronicles former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s professional and personal experiences in her five years as head of government, years that included the birth of her first child, a mass shooting, and a worldwide pandemic, and proved enormously challenging.

Commentaries Festivals

My TIFF 2022 Diary: Highlighting Day-to-Day ‘IRL’ – Johanna Schneller reports (Exclusive)

October 3, 2022July 28, 2024 Johanna Schneller cameron bailey, covid, elton john, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Polley, TIFF 2022, toronto international film festival, viola davis

After two minutes, I realize I’m levitating an inch from my seat with happiness. This movie is everything I’d hoped and more. There is not one wasted syllable. I keep swatting away tears of anger (on behalf of the characters, and their real-life counterparts). I can feel the emotion rolling up and down the rows, that feeling you can only get in a theatre full of people who are having a collective experience. I won’t know this until a few days later, but Women Talking sets the tone for my whole TIFF: brilliant women directors, squaring their sites on the patriarchy. And experiencing their work in public again, finally.