Christian Smith
Maria Bakalova, from left, director Ali Abbasi, Sebastian Stan, Amy Baer and Gabriel Sherman pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘The Apprentice’ at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Monday fair, May 20, 2024. (Photo by Andreea Alexandru/Invision/AP)
CANNES, France (AP) — Donald Trump’s re-election campaign called “The Apprentice,” a film about the former U.S. president in the 1980s, “pure fiction” and promised legal action after its Film Festival premiere from Cannes.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Trump’s team will take legal action “to address the blatantly false claims by these fake filmmakers.”
“This rubbish is pure fiction that sensationalizes lies that have long been debunked,” Cheung said.
“The Apprentice,” which premiered Monday at Cannes, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump. The film’s central relationship is between Trump and Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the defense lawyer who was chief counsel in Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s Senate investigations into alleged communists.
In the film, directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, Cohn is portrayed as a longtime mentor to Trump, training him in the ruthlessness of New York City politics and business. Early on, Cohn helped the Trump Organization when it was being sued by the federal government for racial discrimination in housing.
“The Apprentice,” labeled as inspired by true events, portrays Trump’s relationship 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 naïve real estate developer, soon transformed by Cohn’s education.
The film notably contains a scene that shows Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump’s 1990 divorce deposition, she claimed that Trump raped her. Trump denied the accusation and Ivana Trump later said that she did not mean it literally, but rather that she felt violated.
This scene and others make “The Apprentice” a potentially explosive drama in the cinema amid the US presidential elections. The film is on sale at Cannes, so it doesn’t have a release date yet.
After the premiere, Abbasi addressed the Cannes audience, saying that “there is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising tide of fascism.”
“Good people have been quiet for too long,” he said. “So I think it’s time to make films relevant. It’s time to make films political again.”
Listing the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, Abbasi, whose previous film “Holy Spider” portrayed a serial killer murdering women in Iran, warned of problems ahead.
“In times of turmoil, there is this tendency to look inward, to bury your head in the sand, look inward and hope for the best – hope for the best, hope for the storm to pass,” Abbasi said. “But the storm will not pass. The storm is coming. The worst times are coming.”
The film’s premiere came as the Trump hush money trial continued in New York.
