Joining a raft of outstanding 2019 documentaries (Maiden, Knock Down the House, Fyre), The Kingmaker begins as a fitfully amusing exploration of a political ghost, before blossoming out into something all together bleaker, darker and more relevant. For those not completely crushed by this week's political developments, it is an engaging, perfectly pitched piece, and further evidence that director Lauren Greenfield is one of the leading voices in documentary filmmaking.

Imelda Marcos will be familiar to some and a complete unknown to others. When we first meet her she is a strange creature, bedecked in out-of-place vintage attire and travelling around the Philippines handing out wedges of cash to charities and the poor. In her golden years Marcos was her country's first lady and, thanks to the tremendous access gained by Greenfield and her team, large portions of the film's first act see her waxing nostalgically about her past life. Greenfield delicately introduces grey into the piece, revisiting points in the narrative and adding in new details and more critical voices. These include islanders whose homes were destroyed for the Marcos' private zoo (the starting point for the documentary), dissidents brutally suppressed and family members of now-deceased political rivals. The Kingmaker has a terrific capacity to shock its audience, becoming a colder affair as the laughs dry up and the film circles to the modern-day politics of the Philippines.

Imelda goes from being an endearing, rather captivating figure to almost becoming the villain of the piece, as we see her family manipulate and lead a campaign of disinformation to cleanse their image. At one point the documentary's figurehead utters the words "perception is real and the truth is not’, and you’ll struggle to not react with horror at how central such an idea feels to our contemporary political discourse. Shot and edited over five years, the breadth and depth of Greenfield’s film is impressive given its initial more specific focus. The impact is heightened by effective use of archive footage to underscore the narrative’s points. You leave with your head spinning as you try and grasp all the information that is packed into The Kingmaker.

As a director Greenfield expands her repertoire after Generation Wealth (ambitious, compelling, and sprawling) and The Kingmaker feels closer to her sensational The Queen of Versailles (one of the great cinematic texts of our era). Her new film is enraging, fascinating and often funny, until it is not. While it is focused exclusively on one family within Philippine politics, it feels like an effective warning for what is to come for the rest of the world. And for that it is one of 2019’s scariest films - a must-watch.