The Kingmaker (2019) on Netflix
R20191h 40mDocumentary
Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines, recounts her years in power. Beside her account, the film sets the family's effort to rebuild its image and return to political office.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.6/102,791 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Imelda Marcos was the first lady of the Philippines from 1965, and the documentary follows the 21 years in which she and her husband Ferdinand ruled the country. She describes her own influence on his presidency. Beside her account, the film places officials who investigated the Marcoses and survivors of martial law torture. It follows the family's effort to rebuild its image and return to political power, and her wish for her son Bongbong Marcos to become president. Rodrigo Duterte had the backing of Bongbong and Imee Marcos in his 2016 presidential campaign.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Kingmaker (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Test viewers of Lauren Greenfield's interviews with Imelda Marcos could not tell whether she was lying, so Greenfield interspersed clips of people who knew otherwise, such as martial law torture victims and officials who investigated the Marcoses, a style The New York Times called "dialectic".
- To show Imelda Marcos as an unreliable narrator, Lauren Greenfield turned the interviews into cinéma vérité; one scene shows Marcos knocking over a glass picture frame and ignoring it while a uniformed servant cleans the shards off the floor for her.
- Lauren Greenfield's Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay, her second, made her the first woman ever to achieve that honor.
