Francesca Rudkin: Prime Minister and Holy Cow

Prime Minister  

Chronicling Jacinda Ardern's tenure as New Zealand PM, navigating crises while redefining global leadership through her empathetic yet resolute approach. 

 

Holy Cow 

After the tragic death of his father, 18-year-old Totone must look after his younger sister and their failing family farm. He assumes even more responsibility when he enters a cash competition for the best Comté cheese made in the western part of the French Alps. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from news Talks at.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be Francisca Rudkin our film reviewers here, which it depicts
for this weekend.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Enough, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, we've got two films, both of them showing and
cinemas this morning, very different indeed to one another, but
let's start off by having a little bit of a
Listen to the first one. This is Prime Minister.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I have three years to do as much as we can.
But in the back of my mind I thought, now,
am I going to do this with a baby?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I just feel sorry for myself listening to that, because
I just have no idea what's coming.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
There were two groups on the island, those who were
evacuated and those close to the eruption. We only have
six cases at the moment. This can only be described
as a terrorist attack. Crises make governments and they break governments.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
That is, of course, the voice of JASINDERA durn This
is the desindera DRN documentary tell us about Prime Minister Francesca.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Okay, I think the most important thing you need to
know about this film is that if you're looking for
an objective examination of her government's policies, the achievements and failures.
You're not going to get that here. That wasn't really
the intention of the filmmakers or for this film. This
is more a This film offers actually something quite unique

(01:27):
that we don't see very often. It's very sort of
intimate and personal look behind the scenes at the toll.
The job takes on a person, and let's be honest,
not that you must get to do this job right,
so you know, we don't have the experience of what
it would be like, and you kind of what we
show in here is the unrelenting, cumulative impacts of dealing
with some of the biggest tragedies New Zealand's faced in

(01:50):
recent times. The film sort of starts off in twenty
twenty four in the US, where the Prime Minister is
working at Harvard. She's also starting to work on the
memoir and as part of that she's listened to a
lot of her political diaries or history projects, and the
filmmakers kind of come in and sort of speak her.
Lindsay Hoots and Michelle Waltz kind of talk to her about,
you know, what it's like for her to go back

(02:12):
and listen and reminisce about this and things. I think
they could have pushed a little bit further because actually
the Prime Minister is pretty candid and it is pretty open,
and I think that they could have maybe pushed a
little bit further with her to sort of see what
else that she would reveal. But and the structure of
the documentary is quite straightforward. We kind of go back
and we start with, you know, the sort of creating

(02:35):
a coalition with Winston Peters, and then we work our
way through, you know, her pregnancy in office, the terror attack,
you know, the twenty twenty general election for Charlie White
Island and of course COVID nineteen. So it kind of
texts all those boxes of the things that the Primeister
went through, but you know, they were pretty unprecedented things.
So but it's quite interesting to go behind the scenes
and watch it. I think what makes the documentary is

(02:55):
Kurt Gayford very I think, very sensibly kind of when
she became Prime Minister, he was kind of looking around,
going this is kind of quite crazy. And he's a filmmaker, right, storyteller,
and he was walking around. No one's filming this, so
he started filming and in little moments behind the scenes
and he just kind of kept going and I think
that that's the kind of footage and they're the insights

(03:18):
that really make this documentary contrary and look, to be
honest with you, I quite like having a poke around
Premiere House. Quite like seeing you know, the bee hive
and what you know. A lot of us were not
subjected to that. So yeah, I know that, you know,
the potential subjects can be triggering, but if you take
a sort of a step back, it is quite an
interesting look at the role of leadership and you know,

(03:39):
and of what it really entails being a prime minister.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Okay, yeah, very interesting. So that is Prime Minister that
is showing in cinemas right now. Also showing in cinemas.
Tell us about the French film Holy cow.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Oh look, this is just so delightful. This is a
film from a French director, Louise Corvasier, and it was
her first, her first feature film, and it was sort
of a bit no one sort of really saw it coming,
and it turned out to be a huge hat surprise,
Hat and Frag that won the Youth Prize it Can
and won a couple of season awards and things. It's
a social realist drama slash comedy, but it's not grim

(04:13):
and gritty. It's actually it's filled with lots of heart
and hope and sunshine and things. And we're in the
Jura region, so we're in quite a remote rural area.
The main characters is eighteen year old teenage boy who's
very much an eighteen year old teenage boy as fart
as a cheesemaker. He's got a young seven year old sister.

(04:33):
His father dies and he is really left to look
after this young sister and try and work out how
to manage his grief and how to make a living. Essentially,
he's really not a ques to deal with what's happened
to him. It's a real struggle. But along with some
of this friends, he comes up with this pretty unrealistic
idea to become an award winning cheesemaker and off we

(04:57):
kind of go. What is fabulous about this film, Jack,
is that everybody in it none of them are actors.
They're non professional actors. Clement for O, who plays touton
our main character, he's actually a chicken farmer in real life,
and you really get that sense, and I think that's
what makes it. There is this sort of authenticity to

(05:17):
this story you kind of Yeah, no, it's just really delightful.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
That sounds really good. Okay, cool here something completely different
as well. So that's Holy Cow that is showing in cinemas.
That's a French film. Prime Minister as Francisca's first pick
for us this week. Thank you so much, Francisca, I
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
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