A  chance encounter at an international networking event at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 led to the creation of one of the festival’s buzziest films this year.

The CoCreate event in Cannes is designed to give Canadian producers facetime with international producers and financiers. Ontario Creates puts on the event in partnership with Telefilm Canada, Screen Australia, New Zealand Film Commission, Screen Ireland, the British Film Institute and Screen Scotland.

It was at this event in 2023 that Canadian producer Daniel Bekerman had an industry “meet cute” with Ruth Treacy, an Irish producer, he tells Playback Daily. The duo would go on to coproduce the Donald J. Trump biopic The Apprentice under their respective shingles, Scythia Films and Tailored Films.

In a stroke of perfect timing, one year later their film would premiere at Cannes the same day as CoCreate on May 20, making it almost a full circle moment for Bekerman. “Almost” because Bekerman wasn’t at this year’s event, he was no doubt occupied gearing up for that night’s red carpet.

But it gave CoCreate’s organizers something to cheer about. “It was very exciting at the 2024 event to announce that a coproduction coming out of the meetings was premiering in competition at Cannes that very night,” Erin Creasey, director of industry development, wrote in an email.

The road to the film’s Cannes premiere and the 11-minute standing ovation that followed had as many twists and turns as the plot. Written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and set in 1970s and ’80s New York, the film tracks a young Trump’s (Sebastian Stan) ascent to power through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

The film has made headlines around the world for its controversial subject matter, including a scene that depicts the fictional Trump sexually assaulting his now ex-wife Ivana (who died in 2022), so much so that its producers have been turning down press requests. But the project’s Canadian producers spoke to Playback about the financing structure and production challenges that went into getting the picture onscreen.

Bekerman, whose Toronto-based prodco has expanded to Vancouver, Winnipeg, and L.A., is known for producing critically acclaimed indie fare such as The Witch, as well as for service producing films such as Priscilla and The Dead Don’t Hurt.

It was one of Bekerman’s producing partners on The Witch, Lars Knudsen, who connected him with Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi (Border, Holy Spider), who was looking for a Canadian producer for The Apprentice. Bekerman loved the script and the director’s previous work and boarded the project. “And from that point, we were looking for ways to put the film together,” says Bekerman on the phone from Cannes.

He had worked with international partners multiple times on previous projects. So the copro route was a natural, given that director Abbasi was Danish, as was his DOP, Kasper Tuxen (The Worst Person in the World). “Structurally it made sense to do a copro between Denmark and Canada,” he adds.

But Bekerman still wanted a third country to allow for more tax credits. Cue Ireland’s Treacy following that fateful Cannes meeting. He had worked with Ireland previously on the feature Come to Daddy. “Ireland is always one of my first choices to coproduce with,” he says. “There’s a very good modernized treaty between Canada and Ireland that makes it a great coproduction partner.”

The project attracted a number of investors and lenders, as well as participation from both Screen Ireland and the Danish Film Institute. “And in the end the structure we went with was using a bilateral treaty with Ireland and Canada,” Bekerman explains. “Denmark was involved through the European Convention system.”

Telefilm was not one of the investors, although the film was a CAVCO-qualifying Canadian production. “It’s a Canada majority production including several key positions, such as production designer and costume designer,” Bekerman adds. “It’s a true collaboration that comes from coproduction. It really worked in our favor on this project.”

There was also the matter of the ambitious production on an indie budget. In November 2022 executive producer Greg Denny, who had worked with Bekerman on 2018’s Anon, received the script. Denny couldn’t put it down, telling Playback that it was, “the best script I’ve ever read or had an opportunity to produce.”

But despite this, he turned the project down. “It wasn’t the content that I was afraid of, it was being able to do the film justice with proper production levels given it was a ’70s to ’80s period Manhattan movie,” he says. “I was worried about what we needed to accomplish and how much physically we needed to accomplish that.”

Denny went on to work on another film that ultimately wasn’t produced, but by then it was the summer of 2023. Denny got another call from Bekerman in July with a simple message, “Hey, we’re still here.”

By this point the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes were in full-swing. The strikes proved to be a game changer for the producers once they received a production waiver, giving them leverage to attract the crew they wanted when filming work dried up.

“I felt that I could rally the right crew and get support from the vendors and make a small independent film with a small budget,” says Denny. “Yet do it justice and make it polished and pristine and accurate to the time and the era.”

Principle photography began in Toronto on Nov. 29, 2023. The film was a massive undertaking with more than 100 cast members, 52 locations on 83 sets, and shot in 32 days. Mongrel Media came on board in October 2023 as the Canadian distributor. Most other international territories have been sold as well. There is currently no U.S. distributor, more on that below.

Aside from the leads, Sebastian Stan (Trump), Jeremy Strong (Cohn), Martin Donovan (Fred Trump Sr.) and Maria Bakalova (Ivana Trump), the cast was predominantly Canadian. Post-production was completed in Ireland. The producers declined to provide the budget for the film, but indicated it was “indie” size.

The film’s reception has been mostly positive, with glowing reviews from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and the BBC.

However, there was one camp that wasn’t as impressed. The reelection campaign headquarters of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Trump. His lawyers have slapped the producers with a cease and desist letter in an attempt to block a U.S. sale.

“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” said Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson, in a statement, adding that the Trump team will file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”

At a press conference in Cannes, the film’s director reacted to the news. “Everybody talks about [Trump] suing a lot of people,” Abbasi told reporters. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.”

A rep for the producers issued a statement, which Bekerman confirmed to Playback: “The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president. We want everyone to see it and then decide.”

Image courtesy of Scythia Films