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I rarely add to my festival coverage a film that I have screened without securing the press notes, even though I requested them. The notes help to reference the accuracy of film details and to feature those involved appropriately. Filmmakers go to great lengths to tell a story, they deserve recognition.
The Sundance Film Festival 2025 showcased a large array of films with superb storytelling. Three documentaries I could not secure the press notes for, happen to be worthy of acknowledgement because of their exceptional content and film direction—look for these three films mentioned below on streaming platforms or in theaters.
PRIME MINISTER
Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe, USA 2025
Former New Zealand’s Primer Minister Jacinda Ardern captured the world as she redefined leadership on the world stage among five difficult years of her political career, as leader of the opposition, then as the job of prime minister.
Ardern’s outlook and inspiration is derived from her childhood hero, Sir Ernest Shackleton, who often said and lived by the words, “Optimism is true mortal courage.” She led her country under this motto with humanity, compassion and common sense. Only the second head of state in the world to give birth while in office, Ardern was continually challenged to prove her competence as a leader. She successfully implemented nationwide gun law reforms and guided her country through the COVID-19 epidemic, relying on science, in spite of being highly criticized.
Utz and Walshe present a fabulous portrayal of Ardern as a classy, funny, inspiring, and compassionate leader in PRIME MINISTER, through personal archival footage and never-before heard audio interviews recorded while she was in office tackling her enormous daily workload.
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO
Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards, UK 2024
When the Beatles group disbanded, John Lennon and Yoko Ono sold their belongings in London to settle into a two-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. The reasons were multi-fold: start a new life together, share their music with a different crowd, restore a lost relationship with Yoko’s American daughter, and engage in other business ventures.
They attempted to live simply and fit in as New Yorkers. A difficult path to follow when one is so popular, but they tried. Their favorite pastime was watching hours of television. In 1972, a special report from a journalist, Geraldo Rivera, caught their attention regarding the Willowbrook State School for children with disabilities.
Macdonald and Rice-Edwards showcase a side of John and Yoko that is rarely known by the public of the first eighteen months of their American lives. ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO documents never-seen-before film footage, telephone conversations, and audio recordings from their personal archives to tell a unique story of the preparation and presentation of a one-time benefit concert called “One to One.” The proceeds went to these mishandled children with disabilities housed at the Willowbrook facility in the Staten Island neighborhood of New York. John and Yoko longed for these children to receive the help, love, and guidance necessary for a better future. And so, it was!
THE ALABAMA SOLUTION
Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, USA 2025
Filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman came to Easterling Correctional Center, in 2019, to document an annual religious revival held in the prison yard that included a delicious barbecue. Unbeknown to the filmmakers, this event was nothing else but an excuse to seek help. The men wanted to talk off camera about facility disrepair, but mostly the ongoing physical harm, abuse, and mysterious murders of inmates. Jarecki and Kaufman took the conversations seriously, did their due diligence in research, and uncovered decades of horrific atrocities of inhumane activity that is now public knowledge in THE ALABAMA SOLUTION.
The harrowing feat to bring such information to light was no small task. Jarecki and Kaufman explain the process that began with them at the barbecue. Thereafter, the evidence that was necessary to document took place through secret recorded cell phones—audio and visual images.
This HBO production of THE ALABAMA SOLUTION is truly a miraculous venture to bring justice to all, no matter where you reside, what you have done, or what limitations are put on your existence.
