'The Apprentice' film about Donald Trump wins big at Canadian awards: 'He effectively forced the industry to freeze out our film'
While the team behind the film The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, largely went home from U.S. awards shows empty handed, that wasn't the case in Canada. At the 2025 Canadian Screen Awards, the movie won five awards, Best Motion Picture, Achievement in Make-Up, Achievement in Hair, Performance in a Leading Role, Drama for Stan, and Performance in a Supporting Role, Drama for Strong.
"When Donald heard about our movie, apparently he got a little freaked out and he called us some interesting words. He called us, 'human dumpster fire people' and 'human scum,'" Canadian producer Daniel Bekerman told reporters in Toronto. "But more seriously, he threatened any distributor who would dare to bring this movie out to audiences, and he effectively forced the industry to freeze out our film."
"I think over the last few years, there's been so much discussion about censorship and there's people, including a particular former professor from this city, who is very upset and very mad that they can't say mean and cruel things about some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and they're calling that censorship. But I think I have had a front row scene to what actual censorship is, and that is when the most powerful people in society tell artists and ordinary people what they can and can't say about the people at the top. That's actual censorship."
Bekerman said he felt a real "chill" in the industry around both the release of The Apprentice and possible support for the film.
"A lot of really incredible people fought against that. Someone like Jane Fonda stood up on stage and talked about Sebastian's performance, and how valuable and important it was. That made me so happy," he said.
"The experience with this movie is that institutional entertainment companies really jumped when Donald said jump, that's the truth. And so I feel that in this moment independent storytellers and using the network of international co-productions, there's a lot of fantastic independent storytellers in that network. We are now in a position of almost obligation to tell brave stories, because it's pretty clear that those are not going to be happening in say the mainstream space. So to me, this is the moment for international co-productions, and I think we can do things that no one else can do."
When asked about Trump's recently implemented tariffs and the threat of additional tariffs of films made outside of the U.S., Bekerman sees that through the lens of storytelling.
"My biggest lesson I feel I've learned through this whole process is the truth that I think Donald Trump is actually a genius storyteller," Bekerman said. "He has a very narrow skill set and it's about telling, not just stories in general, a specific story about himself."
"It's about a man with this magical story, about a man with a golden toilet who never loses, who always wins, never ever, ever loses. And he told that for decades, and people started to believe it. Even though he's got multiple bankruptcies, he was such a good storyteller. They ignore that because he's told a compelling story about a protagonist called Donald Trump, and that, to me, is the lens I look at it through. So when he talks about tariffs, I see that as, a chapter in a book, I don't think he writes books actually, but he is trying to push people's emotional buttons. He's not trying to create policy."
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