Donald Trump Threatens Legal Action Against New Film at Cannes

A new film titled The Apprentice, a biopic of Donald Trump, has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, attracting many positive reviews from critics but a legal threat from the former president.

The biopic takes audiences through Trump’s origin story as an ambitious young property developer in 1970s and 80s New York. The former president’s spokesman described the film, which includes a scene where Trump is shown raping his first wife Ivana, as “garbage”, “pure fiction” and “election interference by Hollywood elites,” as reported by the BBC.

The movie opens with a disclaimer that many of its events are fictionalized. It has its debut at the film festival as Trump’s hush-money trial continues in New York, while he readies himself for another presidential election in November.

The title of the film is partly in reference to the TV series that Trump fronted for more than 10 years beginning in 2004. But the movie is set several decades earlier, as Trump is making a name for himself as a real estate developer.

The former president is portrayed by Sebastian Stan, who has appeared in Pam & Tommy, Dumb Money, and a cluster of MCU films as the Winter Soldier. Succession star Jeremy Strong plays Trump’s mentor and lawyer Roy Cohn.

According to the news agency AFP, the film “paints an unflinching but nuanced portrait of the former US president”.

The movie, which reportedly features “rape, erectile dysfunction, baldness, and betrayal”, begins with a sympathetic portrayal of a confident but naive social climber. As it progresses, however, it starts to dig into Trump’s “decency being eroded as he learns the dark arts of dealmaking and tastes power”.

The director, Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, imagines a slew of terrible events being played out behind closed doors. In one brutal scene in the film, Trump is seen raping Ivana. During their real-life divorce proceedings, Ivana accused Trump of raping her, although she later retracted the allegation. She died in 2022.

Speaking to Vanity Fair before the premiere, Abbasi had said the aim was “to do a punk rock version of a historical movie… [not] get too anal about details and what’s right and what’s wrong”.

The movie received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening at Cannes, a festival where such audience reactions are common.

What the Former President has said about the film

Trump’s campaign communications director Steven Cheung said legal action would be taken “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers”.

Adding in a statement “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. This is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

In response to these claims Abbasi told reporters in Cannes “Donald’s team should wait to watch the movie before they start suing us. I don’t necessarily think this is a movie that he would dislike… I think he would be surprised.”

The Trump film debuted to mostly good reviews

“This is the Donald Trump movie that you never knew you needed: full of compassionate feeling yet ruthless in analysis,” said Kevin Maher of the Times in a four-star review.

Deadline’s Pete Hammond described it as “a smart, sharp, and surprising origin story”.

“This is not a hit job on Trump,” he said. “It presents a person somewhat driven but awkward, a man striving for the approval of a tough-love father, unsure but determined to succeed and even oddly charming at times.”

Strong’s performance is “superb”, according to the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, “but Stan’s approach feels too sensitive – given Trump’s total absence of hinterland, the role probably needed a caricaturist’s touch.”