While Donald Trump’s hush money trial entered its sixth week in New York, an origin story for the Republican presidential candidate premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, unveiling a scathing portrait of the former president in the 1980s.
The Apprentice, directed by the Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump. The central relationship of the movie is between Trump and Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the defence attorney who was chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s Senate investigations.
Cohn is depicted as a longtime mentor to Trump, coaching him in the ruthlessness of New York City politics and business. Early on, Cohn aided the Trump Organization when it was being sued by the federal government for racial discrimination in housing.
The Apprentice, which is labelled as inspired by true events, portrays Trump’s dealings with Cohn as a Faustian bargain that guided his rise as a businessman and, later, as a politician. Stan’s Trump is initially a more naive real-estate striver, soon transformed by Cohn’s education.
The film notably contains a scene depicting Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Trump raped her. Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.
Maria Bakalova, from left, director Ali Abbasi and Sebastian Stan pose for photographers at the premiere of the film The Apprentice at the 77th International film festival, Cannes, southern France, on Monday, May 20. Photo / AP
That scene and others make The Apprentice a potentially explosive big-screen drama in the midst of the US presidential election. The film is for sale in Cannes, so it doesn’t yet have a release date.
Variety on Monday reported alleged behind-the-scenes drama surrounding The Apprentice. Citing anonymous sources, the trade publication reported billionaire Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and an investor in The Apprentice, has pressured the filmmakers to edit the film over its portrayal of Trump. Snyder previously donated to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Neither representatives for the film nor Snyder could immediately be reached for comment.
In the press notes for the film, Abbasi, whose previous film Holy Spider depicts a female journalist investigating a serial killer in Iran, said he didn’t set out to make “a History Channel episode”.
“This is not a biopic of Donald Trump,” said Abbasi. “We’re not interested in every detail of his life going from A to Z. We’re interested in telling a very specific story through his relationship with Roy and Roy’s relationship with him.”
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, May 16. Photo / AP
Regardless of its political impact, The Apprentice is likely to be much discussed as a potential awards contender. The film, shot in a gritty 80s aesthetic, returns Strong to a New York landscape of money and power a year following the conclusion of HBO’s Succession.Strong, who’s currently performing on Broadway in An Enemy of the People, didn’t attend the Cannes premiere on Monday.
Following its premiere, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that the Trump team will file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers”.
“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have been long debunked,” Cheung said.
Asked about the Trump campaign’s statement on Tuesday in Cannes, Abbasi told reporters: “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people - they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?”
But the Iranian Danish director also struck a less combative tone as he discussed the film at its festival press conference. He offered to screen The Apprentice for Trump and talk it over.
“I don’t necessarily think that this is a movie he would dislike,” said Abbasi. “I don’t necessarily think he would like it. I think he would be surprised, you know? And like I’ve said before, I would offer to go and meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the movie, have a screening and have a chat afterwards, if that’s interesting to anyone at the Trump campaign.”
After the premiere, Abbasi addressed the Cannes audience, saying “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism.”
“The good people have been quiet for too long,” he said. “So I think it’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.”
The Apprentice is playing in competition in Cannes, making it eligible for the festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or. At Cannes, filmmakers and casts hold press conferences the day after a movie’s premiere.
