13/12/2023 - The Danish filmmaker’s thriller, a Canadian-Danish-Irish-US co-production, will follow the 45th US President’s early years, as he began to grow his vast fortune

Here’s a surprising yet oddly fitting piece of production news: Ali Abbasi, the Iranian-born genre director who studied and has made his home in Scandinavia, will helm The Apprentice, the first high-profile film about Donald Trump. The movie takes place in the 1970s and 1980s, and Sebastian Stan (of many Marvel titles) will incarnate the controversial 45th US President – of course charged with several felonies, and planning to run again in 2024 – as he grows his real-estate business on Wall Street. Jeremy Strong (Succession) will play his early mentor, the infamous attorney Roy Cohn, and Maria Bakalova (who was Oscar-nominated for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) will play his first wife, Ivana. Filming commenced this month in Toronto.

The Apprentice is a production of Canada, Denmark, Ireland and the USA; Daniel Bekerman produces for Scythia Film, Jacob Jarek for Profile Pictures and Ruth Treacy for Taylored Films. The executive producers are Grant S Johnson and Amy Baer, with further support from Kinematics and Hidden Media. Gabriel Sherman wrote the screenplay, marking his first feature-film credit after previously being known for his biography of Fox News president Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room; he’s also an executive producer. Danish cinematographer Kasper Tuxen (The Worst Person in the World [+see also:
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film profile]) is lensing the film.

To be reductive about it, The Apprentice continues Abbasi’s handling of subject matter commonly found horrifying; having also recently directed on HBO’s hit adaptation of The Last of Us games, many expected him to continue working transnationally. His breakthrough was Border [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ali Abbasi
film profile] in 2018, which won the Un Certain Regard Award, and mashed up a dark troll fairy tale and a crime procedural. Next was Holy Spider [+see also:
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interview: Ali Abbasi
interview: Ali Abbasi
interview: Zar Amir Ebrahimi
film profile], on the Spider serial killer of Mashhad, Iran, which brought Zar Amir Ebrahimi the Cannes Best Actress Award for her role as an investigating journalist, along with several leading roles after that.

With its title inspired by Trump’s reality-TV hosting gig, The Apprentice should find a novel angle on this most feared and influential of world leaders.