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Deadline – Controversial Movie ‘The Apprentice’ Has Trouble-Free U.S. Premiere At Telluride As Director Stresses Film Is “Not A Political Hit Piece”: Watch Video

(* Video originally posted by Deadline on x/twitter here and made playable for anyone below)

Filmmaker Ali Abbasi, director of controversial movie The Apprentice, has stressed that his drama about Donald Trump’s rise to prominence in the 1970s-80s “is not a political hit job,” instead describing it more as a “mirror” of the country.

Abbasi initially appeared a tad nervous as he stepped onto the stage of the Galaxy Theater in Telluride for the U.S. premiere of his feature that was a hit at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. You can watch the video below.

The team had been half-expecting legal challenges to prevent the screening and protests from the former President’s supporters. As we’ve reported the film has been facing obstacles since it debuted in Cannes. But Trump’s forces fizzled out and none of them made their way to the mountains in Colorado for the Telluride Film Festival’s special screening that was just announced on Saturday.
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Before introducing the film’s writer Gabriel Sherman and stars Sebastian Stan, who packs a mighty wallop in his portrayal of Trump, and Jeremy Strong who plays lawyer Roy Cohn like a snake writhing in a gutter, Abbasi told the audience that he ordinarily doesn’t get nervous “but I am actually nervous, I have to say.”

He added that the movie had been “some years in the making and now it’s sort of coming back home to you guys.”

Abbasi noted that “I have allowed myself as a non-American to take a deep look into this country and system,” and ”some characters,” he said pointedly without naming Trump.

He joked that “we had a special guest. We had reserved three seats there for him and his body guards, we’re still waiting …he might arrive in the dark, you never know.”

Then “on a more serious note”, he said that “at least for myself … this is not a political hit piece. This is a mirror…and it is intended to show you, as the mirrors do, an image of yourselves, not you per-se, but you as community.”

Having viewed the scorching film twice during Cannes, it was possible for this reporter to observe the audience who seemed to be deeply into what Stan described to Deadline as “an origin film in some ways, and I do hope that it does shed a little bit more light on how it is we got to where we got.”

Stan also felt “excited” by Abbasi’s “vision” and his “European filmmaker’s point of view on what’s going on here, because we’re deep in it.”

The interest in the film has only intensified due to the phenomenal interest in this year’s Presidential election.

The Apprentice, as reported by my colleagues, is set for an October release through Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment .

Guests at the screening included Kieran Culkin who’s at the festival with Jesse Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain, and, of course, he wanted to support Succession sibling Jeremy Strong.