The Apprentice

Part of Shadowbox’s Art House Cinema Pop-Up Oct 29 – Nov 4!

On the eve of what feels like the most momentous election of our lifetimes, we present a cinematic meditation on the origin story of Donald Trump. Not the physical man, but the Persona. The wrecking ball that invaded every part of our national reality for the last decade. How did Trump become Trump? The Donald’s relationship with cutthroat and deeply compartmentalized attorney/fixer Roy Cohn, prosecutor of the Rosenbergs and chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, may explain a lot.

Sebastian Stan plays a young Trump, eager to make his name as a hungry scion of a wealthy family in 1970s New York. He meets his Palpatine in Cohn, played by Succession’s Jeremy Strong (whose legendary method acting must have made this a doozy of a set). Cohn sees in Trump the perfect protégé—someone with raw ambition, a hunger for success, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.

Maria Bakalova plays Trump’s first wife Ivana, and indie stalwart Martin Donovan is the other outsize presence in Trump’s life, legendary praise-withholder Fred Sr.

While we await an uncertain future, we look to art to give us something to understand now.