Jacinda Ardern doco part of impressive Sundance line-up
Friday, 24 January 2025
A documentary on Dame Jacinda Ardern’s five tumultuous years in power will have its world premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival tomorrow (New Zealand time).
Directed by Kiwi Michelle Walshe (Richie McCaw doco Chasing Great), and American Lindsay Utz (an editor on the Oscar-winner American Factory), Prime Minister was one of 10 titles selected for the World Cinema Documentary Competition.
“There was so much good material to look at and evaluate – it was an embarrassment of riches,” Utz says in a festival featurette. “Not only the incredibly intimate footage that Clarke [Gayford] captured, but also the classified audio diaries which gave us a glimpse into what she was feeling in the moment.”
Believing Sundance was the perfect place to launch the film, Utz says that Donald Trump’s re-election while they were finalising the edit meant they felt this opportunity to see what leadership led by kindness and empathy can look like under pressure “was needed more than ever”.
“It asks of our audience, ‘what can we expect of our leaders going into a future where countries are deeply fractured?’,” adds Walshe.
As well as four screenings in the festival’s home Park City (three of which are already sold out) and one in Salt Lake City, the film’s presence will also be boosted by the appearance of Ardern alongside another documentary subject, acclaimed Deaf actor Marlee Matlin, for a Cinema Café conversation on Sunday morning (New Zealand time).
Founded by Robert Redford and first held as the Utah/US Film Festival in Salt Lake City in 1978, the annual Sundance Film Festival has helped launch a range of Kiwi films including Rain, Boy, Eagle vs Shark, What We Do in the Shadows, Slow West, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Coming Home in the Dark and Lucy Lawless’ Margaret Moth documentary Never Look Away. Among the films that featured last year are awards-season contenders A Real Pain, A Different Man, The Outrun, Black Box Diaries, Daughters, Will & Harper and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.
2025’s 41st edition, that includes 88 features from 33 countries, is rumoured to be the next-to-last in Park City, with Boulder and Cincinnati being touted as potential new bases from 2027.
After looking through the line-up for this year’s festival, which runs from today, January 24 to February 3 (New Zealand time), Stuff to Watch has come up with a list of the 12 titles we’re picking to go on to even greater things.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
Original Taskmaster contestant Tim Key co-wrote and stars in this sci-fi-infused comedy about an eccentric lottery winner who tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favourite singers Herb McGwyer (After Life’s Tom Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) back together to perform at a special, private event on his secluded island. It’s an adaptation of Key, Basden and director James Griffiths’ 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.
Bubble & Squeak
Yesterday’s Himesh Patel, Barry’s Sarah Goldberg and What We Do in the Shadows’ Matt Berry team up for writer-director Evan Twohy’s Estonian-shot adaptation of his acclaimed play of the same name. Bickering newlyweds Declan (Patel) and Delores’ (Goldberg) vows are put to the test when they find themselves being pursued by a ruthless customs officer (Berry), who suspects them of smuggling a banned foodstuff – cabbage.
By Design
Writer-director Amanda Kramer’s (Give Me Pity!) twist on the body swap genre is also a skewering of literature, cinema and performance art tropes. Juliette Lewis plays a woman who becomes the chair she covets, but can’t afford. The eclectic cast also includes Mamoudou Athie, Melanie Griffith, Samantha Mathis and Robin Tunney.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Rose Byrne (TV’s Physical) headlines this dramedy about a woman attempting to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist. Directed by actor-turned-writer-director Mary Bronstein (Yeast), it also features Danielle Macdonald, Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Having detailed Janis Joplin’s (Janis: Little Girl Blue) evolution into a star and Evan Rachel Wood’s pursuit of justice as a survivor of domestic abuse (Phoenix Rising), director Amy Berg now takes a look at the gifted musician who only released one album before his tragic death in 1997, at the age of just 30. To paint its portrait, it pieces together never-been-seen footage, voice messages and accounts from the guitarist’s inner-circle.
Jimpa
Acclaimed Australian writer-director Sophie Hyde’s (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Animals) latest tale follows Olivia Colman’s Hannah and her non-binary teenager Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) as they visit the former’s gay grandfather of the title (John Lithgow) in Amsterdam. But when Frances expresses a desire to stay on, it not only challenges Hannah’s parenting beliefs, it also forces her to confront her past.
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Like last year’s Mean Girls and The Color Purple, here’s another movie-turned-stage musical that comes full circle. Diego Luna (Andor) and Jennifer Lopez feature in Bill Condon’s (Dreamgirls and the writer of the Academy Award-winning take on Chicago) reimagining of the 1993 musical that was inspired by the 1985 cinematic adaptation of Argentinian author Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel. Set in 1981, it follows the fortunes of incarcerated gay hairdresser Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), whose escapist fantasies involving screen actress Ingrid Luna (Lopez) are interrupted by the arrival of his new cellmate Valentin (Luna).
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
The first Deaf actor to win an Academy Award (Best Actress for 1986 Children of a Lesser God), Matlin also starred in the Oscar-winning 2021 coming-of-age movie Coda. Director Shoshannah Stern’s (whose own acting career was inspired by seeing Matlin onscreen) documentary promises to let the now 59-year-old tell her story in her own words (mainly via American Sign Language) and explores the complexities of what it means to be a trailblazer.
Sally
In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure, was a secret. More than a decade after her death, her life partner Tam O’Shaughnessy reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.
The Stringer
A late addition to the festival, Vietnamese-American documentarian Bao Ngyuen follows-up his fabulous The Greatest Night in Pop with a two-year investigation that uncovered a scandal behind the making of one of the most-recognised photographs of the 20th century. Five decades of secrets are unravelled in the search for justice for a man known only as “the stringer”.
Train Dreams
Adapted from Denis Johnson’s 2002 novella of the same name (originally published in The Paris Review), this drama revolves around the life and time of logger, husband and father Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton). Building America’s railroads at the start of the 20th century, he experiences profound love, shocking defeat and a world irrevocably transforming before his very eyes. Directed and co-written by Clint Bentley (Jockey), the cast also includes Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy.
The Wedding Banquet
A contemporary reimagining of Ang Lee’s beloved 1993 romantic-comedy. Korean-American film-maker Andrew Ahn (Fire Island) teams up with the original’s co-writer James Schamus to update the romantic triangle into a “co-dependent queer quad of young lovers”. Look out for Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran and Joan Chen.