Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
A new film about Trump that premiered in Cannes to an eight-minute standing ovation still doesn’t have a US distributor. No wonder. It’s called The Apprentice and its fictionalised story ends long before Trump won the White House, but drew gasps for a scene in which he’s depicted raping his first wife, Ivana. The rape allegation, denied by Trump, was first made by Ivana, then retracted in 2015 when Trump was running for president. A spokesperson for his re-election campaign says the film is “blatantly false”, and a billionaire Trump backer who at first supported it has since tried to get the rape scene cut, according to Variety. Trump hasn’t seen or commented on it yet, but the director hopes he will. For an indie film in search of attention as well as distribution it would be “like a gift”.