Director Helen Gaynor
Score 4/6

In March 2018 Filmmaker Helen Gaynor followed Greens candidate Alex Bhathal for the last 3 weeks of the election campaign for the federal seat of Batman.

For those of you who might not remember or perhaps have conveniently forgotten the March 2018 election happened because the previous member was disqualified because of his dual citizenship.

Before we get to far into things Alex Bhathal should be congratulated for her hard work and persistence considering Alex has run six times for the Greens in the federal seat of Batman, in 2001, 2004, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2018. The number of times that Bhathal has run for the seat of Batman and the swing in the vote towards the Greens Party of nearly 10% in the 2016 election are some of the most interesting facts in The Candidate. Personally, I am not familiar with Helen Gaynor’s work as a filmmaker. It was good to see that The Candidate was not the type of documentary gloss things over in an effort to present the best possible story and in fact addressed the fact that Alex was accused of bullying party members and branch stacking, claims which she denied.
After watching The Candidate I can certainly see that Alex Bhathal is a person that I can admire. Am I in a hurry to watch another documentary where a political candidate is shadowed by a documentary filmmaker? Honestly I am not sure.