OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION
Recognized at Cannes for his remarkable film Border in 2018, Ali Abbasi then entered the festival's main competition with Holy Spider (2022), a coarse thriller about the hunt for a serial killer that earned Zar Amir Ebrahimi the Best Actress award. This year, the Iranian-born Danish filmmaker has once again entered the competition with his fourth feature film, The Apprentice. It is a more classic and conventional film than its predecessors, with a partly US production (a first for the director). Its subject, meanwhile, is 100% American as it concerns the early years of Donald Trump's career. The former US president is now running for a second term and on trial in Manhattan criminal court for concealed payments, among other matters.
Far from these current events, The Apprentice doesn't go back as far as its title suggests. The film gets its title from the reality TV show produced and hosted by Trump from 2004 to 2017, in which candidates from the business world competed over a number of weeks to land a top executive position within a company. The show beat audience records and popularized its host, along with the expression "You're fired!" which he used and abused. The phrase gives an idea of the show's prevailing spirit. Abbasi's derisive film returns to this atmosphere.
When the film begins, Trump (incarnated by the brilliant Sebastian Stan) is working for his father's company, which specializes in rental housing. The company is suddenly under investigation by the Justice Department for alleged discrimination against Black applicants. Among the lawyers defending the thorny case is Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, very Scorcese-esque), who earned notoriety in the 1950s when he was an adviser to Senator McCarthy.
In Cohn, the young Trump finds a second father who, unlike his own, encourages him in his ambitions, a mentor who instills in him the laws of success: "attack, admit nothing, deny everything." Very quickly, the student surpasses the teacher, violently turning his back on him as soon as he acquires wealth. Now a real estate developer, Trump is thinking big, very big. With the US economy in crisis, he buys a stake in the Commodore Hotel in New York, a dilapidated establishment that he renovates at great expense, transforming it into a prestigious skyscraper.
In 1979, he undertook the 58-story construction project of the famous Trump Tower, which was completed four years later. It houses his primary residence and the headquarters of the Trump Organization, and it serves as the backdrop for his reality TV show. There's no stopping the businessman, whose penthouse (gold ceiling, crystal chandeliers, silk wall hangings) now dominates New York.
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