OK Chlöe
2020 · 9m · New Zealand
Directed by Charlotte Evans
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
New Zealand's youngest MP, Chlöe Swarbrick, tries to change politics from inside during the defining year of her career.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a political doc that could've been PBS furniture, but Evans catches something genuinely weird in the gap between Swarbrick's idealism and the machinery eating her—the real subversion isn't the premise, it's how little it tries to sensationalize.
A formally astute portrait that situates itself squarely in the lineage of cinema-vérité political cinema, yet Evans' editorial restraint and her refusal to resolve Swarbrick's contradictions elevates this beyond hagiography into something closer to genuine inquiry.
The film hinges on Evans' decision to hold on Swarbrick's face in moments of private doubt rather than cut to rhetoric or rally footage—that single formal choice transforms what could be a campaign film into something about the actual cost of conviction.