As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaches, Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” looms with Sebastian Stan playing a young Donald Trump. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to positive reviews but struggled to find a distributor due to its subject matter, as buyers were wary of repercussions from the former president. But as the “Holy Spider” filmmaker told TheWrap at the Toronto International Film Festival, he does not see “The Apprentice” as merely “a Trump movie.”
“It’s a story of how young Donald Trump was formed with the help of his mentor, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), and how he sort of started to become the person we now know,” Abbasi told TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman at TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design.