Jacinda Ardern On Sundance Documentary Prime Minister New Zealand

Rarely does a political leader come through a documentary with such a sense of empathy and an appreciation of accomplishment as Jacinda Ardern does in Prime Minister. The Sundance documentary starts as a homespun tale, where at 37 she steps up to run New Zealand, and soon learns that she and her mate Clark Gayford are pregnant with their first child. The press narrative over whether a new mother can run the land of the Kiwis soon gives way as the movie becomes like a documentary version of 24, where Ardern is suddenly championing a ban of semi-automatic weapons after a devastating massacre, decriminalizing abortion and handling the Covid outbreak by leaning into the saving of lives more than the re-starting of the economy. She then walked away and is now a climate rights activist whose first major book A Different Kind Of Power is coming, and who among other things is a Senior Fellow in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard. The docu is for sale, and was backed by Madison Wells‘ Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane, who add this to a roster of films that often touch on female empowerment themes, including The Eyes of Tammy Fare.

DEADLINE: Pleasure to speak with the former Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, and Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane of the film’s Madison Wells, a producer with a long track record of telling female empowerment tales. Jacinda, you are a hero to me and many because we Americans just couldn’t imagine there ever being a situation where a country would ban semi-automatic weapons and get owners to engage in a buyback program. I wanted to start this way. I got the impression from watching the film that this didn’t start out as an effort to make a documentary film. It almost seemed like a home movie. Can you describe how it evolved?

GIGI PRITZKER: From our perspective, we were lucky recipients of the opportunity to do the film. Having never done a doc through Madison Wells before, Rachel and I immediately said, if we’re ever going to do something, this is the thing. We were beside ourselves and then once we got more engaged, we realized that the biggest gift was that Clark Gayford, her husband and a broadcaster, picked up a camera almost as if you were going to just do home movies, as you said. The result was a treasure trove of material.

DEADLINE: There’s a moment early on, Jacinda, where you basically tell Clark to buzz off, that you weren’t in the mood to be on camera. Was this originally a document for posterity, your daughter?

JACINDA ARDERN: It’s a great question. The first thing that prompted the idea of keeping a record of a time in office, I’m not the first politician to do that, but many politicians will do it through notes. We have in New Zealand something called the Oral History Project, and it’s been running for decades where on a semi-regular basis, someone will call you and just record an audio interview with you. I’d already been doing that. Part it was just I wanted to keep a record for myself, for my family. I appreciate and love history, and perhaps my history teacher was ringing in my ears when I thought about just keeping a visual record. But you can see that often I was a reluctant participant.

DEADLINE: What is helpful to the narrative of the documentary as this huge scale problems come at you is, you unravel them with your daughter in the shots, and it feels like that child infused you with some of the empathy that was part of every solution you pursued.

ARDERN: I think that is fair, though it probably built on an existing passion that I had. One of the reasons I got into politics was, as a child I spent a few years living in a town where there was a lot of inequality and poverty, and I eventually associated politics as the place to make change. There’s something about thinking about the world through the lens of a child, and certainly having a child and then thinking about what kind of legacy are we going to leave her, it amplified all of the passions that I already had. But she’s been a motivator for so many things. She was one of the reasons Clark wanted to keep a record, because it was her story as well.

DEADLINE: At the start of the movie after you reluctantly step up when your predecessor stands down, you discover well into it that you are pregnant. Suddenly, the press narrative becomes, can you govern while you’re a breastfeeding mother? I could never imagine as a man asking that question to a woman, and good for you for throwing it back on these insensitive questioners. How galling was that for you? You’ve progressed through your party and become the prime minister, and this is what they are asking you?

ARDERN: Yeah, I mean, I wonder whether or not the reason that I often took it in stride was because I was aware that I was in an unusual set of circumstances. And that wasn’t to say it justified the assumption that you couldn’t do both, but I could understand why I was being asked the question. I didn’t always like it. But I could understand when you’re only the second leader in the world to have a baby, in office. So rather than being defensive, I just took on the perspective that I just needed to get out and do the job. That was only really the way, and I would not be the first woman who’s had to multitask and face those questions or try and hide that there’s any impact from caregiving on the work that I do. I am not be the first woman who’s experienced that. It was just very, it was public.

DEADLINE: Even those male reporters presumably have wives at home, and they’ve see women breastfeed and everything else in their lives. It would never occur to me that it would be an impediment to running a country.

ARDERN: Do you know what I appreciated that we were just discussing? The depth of the applause for Clark at the premiere. I think that was acknowledgement not only of the origin of the story, but the role that he played as well. When you are in public office, there’s not always a lot of light shone on the people who are supporting you, in the village that’s around you. I think we should do more of that, because I didn’t do the job alone and I didn’t raise my daughter on my own. And so it was great to give an insight to him as well.

PRITZKER: I think that’s also one of the fallacies that we as a society give to women, which is you can do it all. But you don’t do it all alone. No, that’s a crazy conceit. Not only were you stepping out as a woman, but that you had this other element that was so universal, not only to women, but to men.

DEADLINE: The breastfeeding soon becomes forgotten as you get hit with a series of monumental crises, including the decriminalization of abortion, and then the Christchurch massacre where 61 Muslim worshippers were gunned down, and then Covid. Which of those was hardest to navigate to get the results you got?

ARDEN: Gosh, they were all hard. But abortion law reform, that was a conscience vote in New Zealand. We have an incredible system, where you vote on certain issues. You don’t have to vote on a party line. You vote according to your conscience. And I think the incredible thing about that system, it means that if you have a particular religious perspective or persuasion, or if you happen to be a liberal, but in an otherwise conservative party, you’re able to express that. And so abortion law reform, actually, that was about bringing individuals on board and the timing for that was, the New Zealand parliament was ready for that change as it should be.

So that was about building consensus and shepherding a piece of law through the other challenges. Those others are the unexpected crises that you sometimes face in leadership. And I wouldn’t want to give one more weight over the other because each was devastating in their own ways. I will always carry so many lessons from March 15, most of whom came from New Zealand itself, and the Muslim community. Covid was a global experience, and it was difficult for everyone. New Zealand’s experience just happened to be unique in some ways, but it was still hard, particularly the unknown.

DEADLINE: The mass shooting was a horrible chapter and we see the toll it took on you. But here in the US, we seem to have some form of a mass shooting almost on a weekly basis. Why is it that you were able to get people to realize that these semi-automatic weapons were really only good for one thing, and that this was a powder keg that could go off any time? Here, gun-backing legislators deflect the issue. Why  it does here in this country far too? Why were you able to do that, and there seems no movement here toward that, even after the most devastating and senseless massacres done with semi-automatic weapons?

ARDERN: I can only speak to the New Zealand experience because I only really know its history and culture in any depth. And what I can tell you is that in the aftermath of March 15, that there was a public appetite, maybe expectation is a better word, that as politicians, we reflect how New Zealanders felt. And that’s why ultimately I believe, and yes, we did move quickly. I’m not going to diminish that. We did move very quickly, but that is why I believe you had a parliament where all but one…so 119 members of parliament all voted in favor of that change because they were reflecting their community.

DEADLINE: You watch this movie and I imagine many will be unable to fathom the contrast between a country where you could have a situation where something happens and people don’t just fall on party lines, but actually say, we have to do something about this collectively. You live here now and so you’ve  obviously observed the way it works here. Why do you think it’s so hard here to get anything done that doesn’t skew to these polarized red, blue state agendas? What is the big difference that allowed you to lead the government to do these progressive things?

ARDERN: Well, I mean, one thing I would say is that our political system there is very different. We have something called MMP [Mixed Member Proportional]. It means that we often have multiple parties in government. It means that there’s a diversity of views, and it means that you have to can’t govern without working with others. And so it’s a different system. Mike, you know your system better than I, I’m an observer, but I know that our system is one that I think, no system is perfect, but it is one that really does reflect voters. And maybe it’s one of the reasons we have such high turnout, in the 80% mark of New Zealanders enrolled, out voting. Perhaps it’s because they know that that vote counts. But again, I’m only speaking to New Zealand system.

DEADLINE: It doesn’t sound like there was much regret after the banning of those semi-automatic weapons. Is that still in place?

ARDERN: It is, yeah. Just as a sidebar, there’s some discussion over exemptions and things, but for the most part, that’s in place.

DEADLINE: Then, like every leader of every country, you are hit with the Covid-19 pandemic. You say in the film that the UK mindset is to just let this virus go through and do what it’s going to do, and get past it that way. Your attention to go against that grain to save lives is laudable when you look back. Why did you handle it that way? And do you have any regrets when you look back?

ARDERN: Well, I hope you saw in the film that thought process. I think that was one of the goals of the film, from the storytellers’ perspective, to just provide an insight into leadership, into decision making.

DEADLINE: You closed the borders, and held the outbreaks in check. Then there were major protests over vaccinations and it seemed to wear on you more than many of the things you went through before you resigned.

ARDERN: I hope that the viewer sees that it is just decision making in real time. Often, you see the decision, you don’t often see the choices. So I think that’s what the film tries to do. It provides the context. You see the choices that are there.

DEADLINE: As your term plays back in this film, is there anything you regretted, wished you’d handled differently? Maybe something that you wanted to get done but couldn’t?

ARDERN: I think it’s human nature to always reflect on that, particularly if it’s something as significant as leading a country. Though when I left, I remember saying this, and I can’t remember if I said it in my departing speech or not, but all of the things that brought me into politics are never things that are going to have necessarily a nice tidy endpoint. I came in because I believed in equality and reducing inequality. I believed in addressing child poverty. I believed in the preservation of our environment and addressing climate change, and they just don’t have tidy end points. So the time I was in office, I felt was about trying to make as much progress as I could rather than just job done.