The Apprentice

The Apprentice (2024) is Ali Abbasi's biographical drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Picture 1970s New York, where a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) is still a hungry son of a rich family, working the streets of Manhattan and trying to assemble a real estate empire of his own. What he lacks is muscle and connections.

Both arrive in the shape of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the ruthless attorney and blackmail artist who hands his protégé three unbreakable rules: attack, deny everything, never admit defeat. The film tracks how the trainee absorbs his mentor's playbook, climbs above the city, and eventually outgrows the man who built him, leaving Cohn discarded in his wake. Less a political story than a study of how a personality willing to win at any cost gets manufactured.

Both Stan and Strong earned Academy Award nominations for their work here, and neither plays it as caricature, which on this material is no small feat. The satire runs cold and mean, closer to tragedy than to a joke. If you're curious how a public figure gets shaped, this offers an uncomfortable but honest answer. Stream The Apprentice (2024) online on iFILM.