Is Trump biopic The Apprentice the most controversial film of 2024? It stars Marvel’s Sebastian Stan, one scene involving Ivana shocked Cannes audiences – and Donald Trump is trying to block its release

The Apprentice may not have won any awards at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, but it did earn an eight-minute standing ovation. Described as a “scathing portrait”, the “brutal” Donald Trump biopic certainly caused a buzz at the festival, per Variety. In particular, The Apprentice shocked audiences at Cannes with its depiction of Trump raping his first wife, Ivana. The scene is based on allegations in Ivana’s own 1990 divorce deposition – although she retracted the claim of rape in July 2015 during Trump’s presidential campaign, per ABC News. Per The Guardian, Trump’s legal team was quick to send a cease and desist letter to the biopic’s producers in an attempt to thwart the movie’s release in the US. “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store – it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. Speaking after the screening at Cannes, The Apprentice’s Iranian-Danish director, Ali Abbasi, didn’t mince his words either. “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with fascism,” he said. “It’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.” Here’s what to know about one of the most controversial films of 2024. The Apprentice has a stellar cast and crew Sebastian Stan plays a young Trump in the 1970s and 80s as he pursues his property career. Fans of the MCU universe will recognise Stan for his portrayal of Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier, a role he has filled in seven films to date (and will reprise in 2025’s Thunderbolts). Portraying Trump’s lawyer and mentor is Jeremy Strong, who gives an arresting performance as mob-connected New York City prosecutor Roy Cohn. Strong is best known for his role as Kendall Roy in the hit HBO black comedy-drama series Succession. Besides pursuing power and success, Donald is seen in The Apprentice wooing Ivana Trump (née Zelníčková), played by Maria Bakalova. The 27-year-old Bulgarian actress had her breakout moment in 2020 when she played Borat Sagdiyev’s daughter in the Sacha Baron Cohen mockumentary Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, aka Borat 2. Director Abbasi gravitates towards dark themes; his last film before the Trump biopic was a Persian-language thriller about a serial killer, Holy Spider, in 2022. Meanwhile, the screenplay of The Apprentice was written by Gabriel Sherman, an American journalist who covers the intersection of media and politics, and previously wrote a book about Fox News president Roger Ailes. A Trump ally unwittingly funded the “scathing” biopic Billionaire businessman Dan Snyder, who has been described as a friend of Trump by Variety and others, contributed more than US$1.1 million to the former president’s winning 2016 campaign. Snyder provided investment capital for The Apprentice “because he was under the impression that it was a flattering portrayal of the 45th president”, according to Variety. Three months before the Cannes premiere, per the same source, Snyder saw a rough cut of the film and was reported to be “furious”. To add to the threat posed by Trump’s lawyers, Snyder indicated that he was preparing his own cease and desist letter to block distribution of The Apprentice in the US too, per The Hollywood Reporter. The film is struggling to find a US distributor On May 31, Variety reported that, nearly two weeks after its splashy premiere, The Apprentice still had not secured a US distributor – despite “strong reviews, feverish media attention, a red-hot director and a starry cast”, wrote the publication. “Sources close to the deal making say there are several potential buyers in the mix representing both theatrical distributors and streamers,” continued the article, adding that, according to one source, “none of the major studios are bidding”. Even speciality labels and indie distributors were said to be sitting on the sidelines – from Disney’s Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics and Universal’s Focus, to the likes of independent outfit Neon. The latter already went out on a limb to release an arguably more confronting work of Abbasi’s back in 2018: the Swedish-language film Border, which deals with child sexual abuse, among other topics. When it comes to The Apprentice, the likelihood of alienating half the population of the US is sure to put off many studios – but there is even more than that at stake. The biopic’s producers “argue that these companies are operating out of fear, because releasing the movie could land them on Trump’s bad side”, per Variety. “If he does return to the White House, Trump could exact his revenge, leveraging his position to block or slow deals, while enlisting different regulatory agencies to more closely scrutinise their operations.”