Filmmaker Ali Abbasi has responded to the Trump campaign's threat to sue over his film The internwhich premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday evening standing ovation of eight minutes.
“Everyone talks about him suing a lot of people, but they don't talk about his success rate, you know?” Abbasi said this in France on Monday morning, drawing laughter from the audience at the first press conference The intern.
The director acknowledged Trump's likely assumptions surrounding the film, saying, “If I were him, I'd be sitting in New Jersey, Florida or wherever he is now — or New York — and I'd be thinking, 'Oh, this crazy Iranian man. and some, like liberal assholes in Cannes, got together and made this movie, and it's ruined.'”
“But I don't necessarily think this is a movie he wouldn't like,” Abbasi added, before saying he would be happy to screen the movie for Trump and discuss it with him.
He continued, “I don't necessarily think he would like it. I think he'd be surprised, you know? And as I've said before, I'd offer to meet him wherever he wants and talk about the context of the film, do a screening talk, and then have a chat afterwards, if that's of interest to anyone in the Trump campaign.
The intern explores Donald Trump's rise to power in 1980s America under the influence of right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn. Sebastian Stan portrays a young version of the real estate mogul in his pre-MAGA days Succession star Jeremy Strong plays Cohn, along with Martin Donovan (Basic principle) as Fred Trump Sr. and Oscar nominee Maria BakalovaBorat subsequent movie film) as Ivana Trump.
The film has been described as a surprisingly humanistic portrayal of the global icon now known simply as 'The Donald', but also contains several disturbing and deeply unflattering scenes, including a sequence in which he rapes his first wife Ivana, undergoes liposuction and surgery undergoes. his bald spot, becomes addicted to diet pills and betrays the trust of many of those close to him.
During the premiere Monday night, Abbasi revealed his intentions by stating: “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism. There is only the messy way. There is only the banal way. There is only one way to deal with this wave on his own terms and at his own level, and that will not be pretty.”
“I think the problem with the world,” he added, “is that the good people have been quiet for too long. So I think it's time to make films relevant. It's time to make films political again.”
Later Monday evening in Cannes, as a glitzy afterparty The intern got underway, word began to spread that the Trump campaign was threatening to file a lawsuit in response to the film.
“We will file a lawsuit to address the blatantly false claims made by these so-called filmmakers,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “This garbage is pure fiction that sensationalizes lies that have long been debunked.”
“This 'movie' is pure malicious slander, should not see the light of day and does not even deserve a place in the direct-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-close discount film store,” Cheung continued, “it belongs in a waste container.'
The intern still had no US distributor, although it was previously sold at the Cannes festival to StudioCanal for Britain and Ireland, where it will be released theatrically later this year.
When Abbasi was asked about the release plans at the press conference, he joked: “There is a promotional event coming up called the US elections that will help us with the film. The second debate will be on September 15th, if I remember correctly, so that's a good release date for us, I'd say.
Strong, already praised by critics as the film's highlight, was absent from both the Cannes premiere and the press conference for it The intern because he is busy performing in New York on Broadway in a critically acclaimed version from Ibsen An enemy of the people. Abbasi read out a message from the actor at the beginning of the press conference.
The message read: “'An enemy of the people' is a phrase that has been used by Stalin, Mao, Goebbels and, most recently, Donald Trump as he denounced the free press and endorsed CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS News , the “fake news media” of the New York Times. An enemy of the people,” Strong wrote. “We live in a world where the truth is unresolved. In many ways, that assault on truth began when Trump apprenticed with Roy Cohn. Cohn was called an assault specialist by police National Legal Journal. We experience the long, dark shadow of Roy Cohn – his legacy of lies, of outright denial, of manipulation, of a great disregard for the truth.”