This Documentary was released on 13th December 2019 and is no longer screening. 

Acclaimed director Lauren Greenfield has built a successful career through documenting the extremes of wealth in such films as The Queen of Versailles (2012) and Generation Wealth (2018). In The Kingmaker, she turns her attention to Filipino politician and former First Lady Imelda Marcos, whose extravagant tastes while married to the dictator Ferdinand have become the stuff of legend.

Greenfield begins her story in 2014, when Imelda is in her eighties, and embarking upon an improbable return to power via her son Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, whom she is helping in his bid to win the vice-presidency. To this end, she confidently rewrites her family’s scandalous history, replacing it with a narrative of a matriarch’s extravagant love for her country.

Enlightening as much as it is enraging, The Kingmaker is a damning portrait of entitlement, opulence and corruption.

(Notes by David O’Mahony.)

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