the media landscape is hardly short of images of and words from donald trump. that is, the real trump. but there is also a fictionalised trump making waves in a newly released film, the apprentice, which portrays his early years in business and his relationship with the ruthless new york lawyer roy cohn. my guest is the film's iranian—born director, ali abbasi. team trump did its best to block the film's release, and the tehran government banned his previous movie set in iran. so is censorship a growing cross—cultural problem?

ali abbasi, welcome to hardtalk. thanks. we have to start with the movie the apprentice, just released. but it's a project that you have been working on for the best part of six years. why so long in the gestation? well, when ijoined the team in 2018 to develop the project, i was thinking that it's going to be a quick one. you know... he was still president at the time. he was still president. you know, and i think it started by, you know, gabe sherman, who is a political journalist, you know, covering his 2016 campaign. and when he won, he was wondering, how did this happen? how did he became the person he is? and he went back in, you know,

and did the research and found out there's this very transformative relationship between him, a young donald, and roy cohn, and they sort of... he was his political mentor, so to speak. and i think that is sort of, like, explanation of who he became as he is now. that doesn't really tell me, though, why it took so long to get the project actually into cinemas, and it seems to me there's something interesting about the way in which certainly the major studios in hollywood reacted to the proposition that you and gabe sherman and all the key people involved in this film were putting forward. well, i mean, it doesn't take, like, a great knowledge to... and you look at someone as, you know, divisive as mr trump is and as polarising and someone who, like... you know, we're dealing with someone

you know, we're dealing with someone who changes the world in real time. so, for example, we had everything, you know, a good chunk of our financing in place. but then january 6 happened and nobody wanted to touch it. even now, when we did the movie, we premiered in cannes and we wanted to distribute it, we had huge problems. so, you know, this is an ongoing situation. are people are scared of it? of it or of him? well, that's an interesting question in itself. but when you approach major studios or distributors with the idea that they would get involved with the apprentice, which is the story of trump's early years in business, do you think that they thought to themselves, "you know what? "this just gets us into territory too controversial, "trump has too many supporters, the commercial value "of this is questionable. "we just don't want to go there"? well, some of these people who i know privately told me that they think it's a great movie. it's, you know, well played, so forth and commercially viable, actually. but they were also, you know, "we have, you know,

"80 million—plus consumers who wants to buy our products, "who wants to have our subscriptions, who wants to, "you know, in any way be part of, you know, "we want them as our customers and, you know, as great "as the commercial value and artistic value of "the movie is, it doesn't justify, we can't "sell it to the board." you know? trump's called it a hatchetjob made by, quote unquote, human scum. right. ie you. how do you respond to that? because he's saying it's utterly baseless, it's a distortion and a deception, and that the people behind it have only one agenda, and that is to destroy his political movement. it's funny because, you know, some of our liberal friends on the other side, friends on the other side, they are accusing us of softening his image, helping him getting elected and making him too human, you know? and i'm thinking, if we're pissing everyone off, including donald trump, including right and left, then we're doing ourjob.

they are accusing us truth is an important sort of feature theme of this movie, because what we see in the early donald trump and his relationship with this ruthless and ethically challenged lawyer, roy cohn, what we see is cohn teaching trump how the truth is entirely malleable, that in the end there is no such thing as objective, absolute truth, there is simply what you say to be true, which can be true in certain circumstances. you manufacture the truth you need to win. so what's your relationship with the truth? cos you, at the beginning of the movie, say that, you know, this is based on real life and real detail. but many say that there are details in this film that are nothing to do with the truth. look, this is not a documentary. this is not a document of mr trump's life. it is a work of fiction. as a work of fiction,

i don't think that it, you know, if it's fact—based or fact check, it gets better or it becomes a great movie... no, but it matters, doesn't it? it matters. but what matters... these are real people you're portraying. exactly. they're not fictional characters. but what matters is my, you know, ethical principle of, you know, dealing with the real person. and that may or may not make a movie a better movie, but it's important for me that, you know, treat mr trump as any other living character, and it's important not to diverge from truth, not to be too creative with some of the key events, because that would, you know, change the meaning of things in a way that i don't think is morally right. but i do think that we passed the test. i do think so. you in the movie portray donald trump and his relationship with ivana, his wife. there's a very difficult to watch scene in which trump rapes his wife. right. you give it some detail and... that's right.

..it never happened, according to donald trump. and indeed it never happened, according to ivana trump. well, the scene in question, it's based on a deposition by ivana trump under oath in court. you know, where. .. part of her divorce proceedings. which, just a few years later, when those proceedings were leaked to the public, she denied. she went on record saying, and i'm going to quote it cos it is quite important, "on one occasion, mr trump "and i had marital relations in which he behaved very "differently towards me than he had during our marriage. "as a woman, i felt violated, as the love and tenderness "which he normally exhibited towards me was absent. "but. _ _" and this is the crucial part, "i referred to this as a rape, "but i do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal "or criminal sense." then... you ignored that. then i can ask you that, why would you want to repeat that in your memoir in great detail, if you really think

that that didn't happen and that was the way it was? and also, we're dealing with a person who is... you know, he is convicted in civil court for another case of sexual assault, which has nothing to do with this. so this doesn't come out of thin air, you know, and, yes, you know... but we began by talking about the importance of truth. yeah. and yourfilm is a lot about the deceit that you believe cohn and trump were responsible for in business. that's right. so how much deception did you get involved in? cos it turns out that one of the key funders of this movie, when you were struggling to get funding from the major studios and whatever, one of the key funders was a guy called dan snyder, a billionaire who happens to be an ally and a friend of trump, and he seems to have believed that your project was going to be quite positive toward trump. but when he saw the rough cut of your movie, he was appalled. well... did you deceive him? i wish. it would have been a great story. what happened was, you know,

mr snyder gave his son—in—law, mark rapoport, seed money for, you know, their production company. mark chose the project. you know, we were partners. ithink... i believe that they really wanted to take chances, they really wanted to, you know, to help the project. but then what happened between that time and when the film was made was that mr trump went from a disgraced former president everyone was laughing at to someone who's maybe on his way to become the most powerful person on earth again. and this scared people, and suddenly that script was problematic. suddenly those scenes were difficult. and, you know, look, the way... i haven't talked to mr snyder, but i'm thinking, in the us, everyone, when they get to a certain wealth level, they're donating to left and right and centre and north and south, as long as they get something out of it. let's not forget fred trump, donald's dad, lifelong democrat, big democratic donor, roy cohn, democrat. mr trump, a sort of

a pro—abortion democrat before he became an anti—abortion republican. what does that tell you about the political system? what's interesting to me is that you have made this movie which says some very interesting things about that period in the 1980s when donald trump was rising as a property developer. you're an outsider. you know, you were born in iran. you are based in denmark. you've made some fascinating films, which we'll discuss later, which are nothing to do with either the politics of the united states or the culture of the united states. right. what do you think you can say that is fresh and interesting about donald trump? i think i can see these people as human beings. i can relate to them as human beings, and i can tell that complex human story without having a horse in the race. mmm. you know, i'm not democrat. i'm not republican. frankly, i don't care,

like whoever wins, you know. do i strongly disagree with a lot of mr trump's politics? yes. do i think it's crazy and loony to call the people eating cats and dogs? absolutely. but as someone who, you know, grew up under a strict dad and is ambitious and trying to make it work and trying to ascend, that's not a particularly specific story to him. it's a universal story in that way. and i think that me looking at it from the outside gives me this possibility of being morally detached from it, emotionally detached from it, and be able to look at them as human beings, which they haven't been, actually. that's very interesting. did you find things to like in donald trump? yeah. i mean, i wouldn't have been able to make the movie if ijust hate the characters, you know? i think that the sort of, you know, naivety and relentlessness that he is trying to get to his...

to become someone, do something, you know, become a significant person, has a meaning in his life. that's something i can definitely relate to, you know, that how that turns and amplifies in the sort of social darwinism of american society and power structure, that's something else. now, the timing of this is important. i mean, you say you don't have a dog in the fight, but if this movie is one factor, perhaps a small factor, but a factor in settling some people's minds on how to vote, and if it does have some impact in november's election, and if it might be one reason why trump feels he lost, will you regard that as a feather in your cap? will you be pleased if that is the outcome? i wouldn't be pleased either way, because i think that this movie would have a longer life than maga movement, mr trump and this election, you know, ithink, you know, when charlie chaplin did the great dictator, it was shot six days after the second world war started. it was, you know, shown i9ai.

in fact, chaplin in �*60s or �*50s, he was, you know, he felt that it was maybe too soon, it was maybe too disrespectful. if he'd known what happened in concentration camp, he wouldn't have done it. but in the �*90s, it became a masterpiece of political satire in the, you know, 70 years after it became a seminal movie. all i'm saying is that it would be short—sighted to connect whatever we've done for the past six years because of the timing of the release, which is frankly, i think, is the best timing, because if we've done a movie about, you know, messi, the football player, i would have want that to come out before the world cup. does that mean i want to affect the outcome of the world cup? let's switch focus now from the united states, where currently you're making waves, to iran, where you were born. you left iran as a student, i think aged around 20.

right. and you've never been based there since, but you did make a film that was set in iran, came out in 2022, holy spider, which the iranian government was infuriated by and censored. i mean, there's no way... some of this stuff from trump camp is a complete deja vu from the iranian government, actually. do you really feel that? the human scum and baselessness and trying to be disrespectful and trying to politically challenge and change and whatnot — i've heard that before. but you're surely not trying to compare, create some sort of equivalence between the cultural climate in the united states and iran, are you? look, there's something with the american populist right, and the way they connect their petty economical and personal interests to a bigger ideology that sounds eerily, eerily similar to what the mullahs are doing in iran.

you know, where they want to have a monopoly of importing sugar, and they connect it to quran and islam. you know, that's why sort of i've seen that mechanism in work before. see, i'm interested by this. i just wonder to what extent you identify yourself as a movie director who makes political movies? cos just quickly to tell people roughly the storyline behind holy spider, it's again based on a true—to—life story of a serial killer in the holy city of mashhad in iran, who, in the period around 2000, 2001, went on a killing spree, killing sex workers, prostitutes in the city. his idea that he was on some sort of holy mission, he was cleansing mashhad of this evil. he was eventually convicted and executed, but he clearly had many supporters inside iran who thought that what he did was in some sense justifiable. did you tell his story as a political act? i think my movies are political

in a way, in the sense that i'm interested in the other. i'm interested in the side that i don't disagree with, that i don't necessarily empathise with, that i necessarily understand. and i think it's important for an artist, film—maker, you know, person, you know, working with culture for us to have that dialogue, to have that understanding, to have that investigation. now, do i think everyone should do it? no. but i think that making movies generally is a political act. sometimes you do that by choosing certain things to include, sometimes by saying things to exclude. but here's something interesting you said after the movie came out. "it evolved from a story about an individual "serial killer to a story about a serial killer society." that's right. you think iran today is a sort of a serial killer society, a culture and a society which makes it almost inevitable that these sorts of terrible acts

and actors emerge? look, if you have a country like iran where, like, basically you're taking half of the population, the women, hostage, you're making their life difficult. you're cutting into their rights, their way of living, you pressure them every possible way. you are creating a context where, you know, these acts of violence become legitimate. you know, there's no way around it. now, do i think everyone roots for serial killers in iran? absolutely not. you know, it is a big country and it has, you know, many layers in society. but i think the sort of, the formal, you know, narrative coming from the establishment is, "well, women are not as "worth as men, and especially if they're not light—footed, "especially if they're sex workers, then they don't " have human values. "so do what you want," you know? and so that's the logical conclusion of that.

you wanted to make the movie in iran. that's right. the iranian government absolutely refused to give you permission. well, they didn't say yes or no, which is their way of saying no, you know. but what's interesting to me about that, your approach to them and them stalling, is that you said to them, as i understand it, "you know what? "here's a rough idea of what the film is going to be "and the script outline, but i am prepared to adapt it "if you'll let me film inside the country." you were prepared to sort of modify your story to get past the iranian censors. and yet you have criticised other leading iranian film—makers for being too compliant to what the government requires them to do inside iran. yes. so isn't that a hypocrisy on your part? maybe. but that didn't happen, though. well, i know it didn't happen, but you wanted it to happen. well, i mean, at the time, i was saying whatever i could

so that i could get my shooting permit and then do whatever i want to do, which is the way to deal with these governments. but isn't that what, you know, kiarostami and so many other great iranian film—makers would say that they've done, to enable them to make theirfilms inside iran? possible. but i also refuse to actually work under those conditions. you know, that's the important thing. but you've not only refused to work under those conditions, i have to say, you have implied that some of the great iranian film—makers have made unacceptable, complicit deals with the government, particularly in the way they portray women. 100%. i stand by that because when you show a movie which is supposed to be realistic, and then in that movie, a woman in, you know, wrapped in ten layers of cloth is sleeping on a bed and sleeping, you know, you're implying that that's reality, that's life. but that's not the case, you know? you mean they're only showing it that way because they know that's the way to get past the censor? well, you know, as a film—maker, you can go

and stand by your movie and say, "you know, "guys, i couldn't get it past the censorship. "that's why i did it." so, you know, you have to stand for the actual end results. you can say whatever you want. look, when i'm dealing with the lying, you know, authoritarian mullah regime, why would i go and have a conversation about truth with these guys? they don't care about the truth. well, am i right in thinking your level of fury and anger and alienation from the theocratic regime in iran has really risen massively in the last couple of years since really the rise of the women's protest movement inside the country? it is a huge tragedy, stephen. it's a huge tragedy that this system is taking, you know, iranian people hostage. you know, and that's... there you have middle east in a nutshell. you know, your choices are

between netanyahu and khamenei. you know, it's like you don't have a good choice, you know? that's the problem. yeah. i mean, do you think it's possible to be a creative, an artist inside iran today? look, i don't have a place to tell people how to do things. this is not my place. but you've burned your bridges entirely now with. .. sure. but that's my personal thing. but i can't tell people, "oh, just because you work in iran "under these conditions, you can't do great movies." absolutely, people have been able to do that. i just can say that there are certain conditions that are, you know, acceptable to me or not. and i think there is a huge creative energy inside iran. but, you know, the idea that you can bend the rules and you can do whatever you want, even under the harshest conditions, that's a bit of a romantic idea. there are some things, there are some regimes that you cannotjust,

you know, you cannot always bend when the other side has, like, a bat in their hands, you know? you cannotjust, like, talk your way out of everything. you cannot. and we've seen directors arrested. you said that your parents have been called inside iran, where they still live. you said that your mum begged for you to actually think hard about the movie that you made. right. how much pressure do you feel under, even as an exile, and how much do you think your creative future is going to be defined by this? well... it's not a great place to be. i can be honest with you. you know, like, you know, at some point, i had to make a very tough decision about, you know, whether i'm jeopardising, you know, my family's safety or whether i'm standing by what i think is true and needs to be said.

that's not fair, i think, to, you know, to put a person in a situation like that, you know. but on the other hand, i also felt like, you know, i've had the privilege, you know, and the education and, you know, so many people work hard for me to get to a point where i can say this. and if i let go of this opportunity, you know, not only i lose, but millions of people lose. and, you know, half of the population who are, like, under, you know, gender apartheid lose, you know, so at some point you have to go, "ok, i need to be less petty about me and my personal needs "and think in a bigger picture." does that mean that i think it's a great thing that, you know, my family is threatened? absolutely not. i have to deal with it. but, you know, that's the thing with censorship. ali abbasi, i thank

you very much for joining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello. areas of heavy and, in places, thundery rain to take us through tonight, but it won't be a cold night by any means. now, if i show you the temperature — normally this is how temperatures compared to normal over the next few days, the oranges and the reds show temperatures above average, peaking really on wednesday and thursday, but remaining above average as we go through

into the weekend. driving it all is this area of low pressure. it's allowing those southerly winds, but because of its proximity is why we're going to see those areas of rain. so, for the night ahead, it's going to be a case of heavy, thundery rain in the south and west to begin with, pushing its way northwards and eastwards. some drier, clearer spells east anglia and the south—east later on and temperatures not dropping a massive amount — 10—14 or 15 degrees. that's not a million miles away. it should be in an afternoon, never mind first thing on a wednesday morning in october. so, to start the day, lots of cloud in the north and west. still some areas of rain around thundery for one or two. it's going to come and go. northern england, scotland, northern ireland during the morning, linger though into the afternoon for some across scotland. we then see another batch of rain develop across wales and the south west and the channel islands later, but with some clearer skies. lincolnshire, east anglia and the south—east, bit of sunshine through the afternoon here could lift temperatures to around 21 or 22 degrees — that's around six degrees above where we should be for this stage in the year. another batch of heavy thundery rain then works its way northward and eastwards as we go through wednesday night and into thursday, affecting most parts actually, with some clearer skies in the west later.

so, it might turn a bit fresher here in the west by the end of the night, but still, temperatures in double figures, if not mid teens for some. but here's the chart for thursday. instead of southerly winds as those weather fronts go through, it's west or south—westerly ones, so the winds will be as strong, but still not cold winds at that. early rain across parts of scotland, typically north and east, maybe through central areas clears. sunny spells for the vast majority, but we could see some showers, even some lengthier ones around these western areas around the irish sea in particular with some blustery winds. but away from that, with the sunshine out and lighter winds, it may actually feel a little bit warmer than wednesday. into friday, we start to inject a bit more moisture into the atmosphere, so more cloud around. still some sunny spells through central eastern areas in the west, though the cloud will be thickening up through the day. outbreaks of rain become heavy and prolonged, the winds strengthening as well, and we could see some pretty rough seas around parts of wales and the south—west, too — that rain spreading eastwards on friday night.

the biden administration has given its most stark warning yet to israel over its conduct in gaza — threatening to withdraw some military assistance — unless israel allows more humanitarian aid into the enclave. us defense secretary lloyd austin and secretary of state antony blinken sent a letter to israel's military, which was then leaked to the media. it says israel must, within 30 days, act on a series of �*concrete measures�* to boost aid. it comes amid further israeli strikes on gaza on tuesday. health ministry. in northern gaza, an air strike killed 17 people on tuesday near al—falouja, gaza's largest refugee camp. israel says it is targeting hamas militants. with more, here's our state department correspondent tom bateman. northern gaza is under renewed israeli assault.

loud blast its offensive, it says, is to clear out hamas.