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. {"@context":"https://schema.
org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"US screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, Iranian director Ali Abbasi and Romanian-US actor Sebastian Stan and US actor Martin Donovan leave after the screening of the film The Apprentice at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20. Photo: AFP","url":"https://cdn.i-scmp.
com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/06/03/0ff5b3e8-3fea-4362-9a90-4174faa72982_c54ddb00.jpg"} US screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, Iranian director Ali Abbasi and Romanian-US actor Sebastian Stan and US actor Martin Donovan leave after the screening of the film The Apprentice at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20. Photo: AFP 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 .