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JACINDAMANIA

By Pietra BRETTKELLY, Justin PEMBERTON

Biography - Production 2023

A social excavation of the rise and fall of the world’s youngest female leader, exploring how the mania that embraced her collided with a backlash of hate, told through a bold mash-up of media, peer and personal archive.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Biography, Female director, Documentary
- Countries
- NEW ZEALAND
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Pietra BRETTKELLY, Justin PEMBERTON
- Writer(s)
- Justin PEMBERTON, Pietra BRETTKELLY
- Cast
- Jacinda ARDERN
- Producer(s)
- Chelsea WINSTANLEY (THIS TOO SHALL PASS)
- Synopsis
- Jacinda Ardern has been a unique magnet for hope in a world looking for political difference – she was the world’s youngest leader, female, unmarried, she DJed, and was pregnant during her tenure, she formed the most diverse government in her country’s history, banned assault rifles, lead one of the world’s most successful responses to the Covid Pandemic, delivered her country its lowest unemployment rate ever, and refused to say the name of the terrorist responsible for the Christchurch mosque massacre, she held her baby before delivering her address to the UN General Assembly. But this behaviour also brewed a hate that festered. It created vitriol on a level never before seen, with a stream of death threats and violent abuse that culminates in her emotional resignation mid-second-term, saying, "I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.”
  
  Everything that inflated Jacinda’s stardom also inflated an oppositional resentment that gnawed like a tumour. JACINDAMANIA is not a biopic about Jacinda Ardern; yes her story is revealed, but woven around that is a nuanced social-excavation of how the world reacted when faced with this unorthodox leader.
  
  Told through a bold mash-up of peer and personal sourced material, social media, memes, international late-night chat shows, podcasts, breakfast television, and tv and radio news and commentary, this unique film will track and reveal the extremity of responses tiggered by Jacinda Ardern’s leadership. The story will resonate internationally with an audience who saw her on the cover of Time Magazine and projected 829 metres high on a Dubai skyscraper. Her brand of leadership was desired around the planet. But similarly, part of the world was not tolerant of her unique style of leadership.
  
  Jacinda Ardern was witty, cried in public and told us to “be kind”. She met the UK’s Queen pregnant and unmarried with her partner who called himself “The First Bloke”. But when Jacinda wears a hijab while consoling the families of the 51 shot dead in a mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand seeds of disgust are planted around the globe ... which will eventually be harvested during Covid lockdowns by a loud anti-social opposition groomed in ‘outsider’ chats across the web.
  
  JACINDAMANIA was a term coined by media when support for Ardern swept through New Zealand. But the mania that gave her global celebrity status would become a mania of death threats and bodily harm to her and her family. Her parents were shocked and frightened when they saw the popstar status at her 2017 Campaign Launch. Their fear was prophetic. Eight people are currently in the court system for credible death threats. The words they’ve used reflect US politics, not New Zealand’s, and some argue this is a sign of where the unrest was being manipulated from.
  
  JACINDAMANIA will be a riveting, insightful, sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, constantly surprising documentary film, juxtaposing a celebration of female empowerment and compassion against the extreme and shocking hatred directed at her.
  
  Jacinda has just announced her next role. She has chosen to focus on prevention of online hate and harm on a global level through her initiative titled The Christchurch Call.
  
  JACINDAMANIA will conclude with Jacinda having the last word, whether it be an interview months after she’s left office and is a ‘normal’ person, or simply a shot of her on the beach picnicking with her daughter. The future is hers.
  
  "Wait a second, she's leaving because it's the right thing to do? She didn't lose an election or steal classified documents or have a Boris Johnson sex party?”
  - Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, January 2023