The Apprentice

Set in the vibrant but cutthroat world of 1970s-80s New York, The Apprentice traces the rise of a young Donald Trump as he enters the real estate business, heavily influenced by his mentor Roy Cohn. The film delves into Trump's early life, exploring his hunger for power and success, as well as the relationships that shaped him, especially with his father and Cohn. Roy Cohn was an infamous lawyer, known for his role in the McCarthy hearings. He became Trump's legal and personal adviser, teaching him tactics of intimidation and manipulation. The film portrays Cohn as the architect behind Trump's aggressive business style and explores how their relationship helped Trump forge his path to becoming a dominant figure in New York's high society. In recent interviews, director Ali Abbasi spoke about how he believes that it was Cohn who taught Trump the art of "fabricating reality as you see fit for your own purpose," adding "And he was very good at it." He further said that believes Cohn was a "PR genius" as "he was one of the few people who understood when you want to talk to people, you have to talk on their level, to their language, and not this sort of elevated media talk that we at the time..." In an interview to A Rabbit's Foot, he said, "I was watching Frankenstein at the Academy Museum a few weeks ago, and there's a sentence at the beginning where Dr. Frankenstein talks about how in the absence of God he created this monster in his own image. That could be the headline of what Roy Cohn is doing. In a way, this isn't a Trump movie, but it's a transformation movie. If you're interested in knowing how someone could become the person he is, you'll find your answers here. This isn't about the guy who's running for office." Ali Abbasi is an Iranian director, known for his two extraordinary award-winning films Holy Spider and Border. He is one of the most inventive filmmaking voices today in contemporary world cinema, pushing the boundaries of storytelling with every film. The Apprentice was shot in 2023, primarily in Toronto, with its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Written by Gabriel Sherman, this film stars actors like Sebastian Stan Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova and Martin Donovan. The Apprentice offers an insight into the life of one of the most polarizing figures in modern history before his rise to the presidency. I like the idea of exploring a controversial figure like Trump from the lens of his past, tracing the point that led him to become the person we know him as today. This film could become an interesting document in itself, to study how much a character like Trump could be humanised in the first place, what kind of scrutiny the film subjects him to, and how it pieces together this important part of history especially with the conversation around it in the wake of the Presidential Elections.