Ali Abbasi: Is censorship a growing cross-cultural problem?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to the Iranian-Danish film director Ali Abbasi. His new movie The Apprentice, about Donald Trump’s early years in business, has enraged team Trump. He’s also made powerful enemies inside Iran. Is censorship a growing cross-cultural problem?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sackett. |
| 0:04.6 | My guest today is a still relatively inexperienced movie director, |
| 0:09.3 | but his work has already caused an enormous stir around the world. |
| 0:13.7 | For Ali Abassi, it's not only about the quality of the films he's made, |
| 0:17.8 | but also about the power of the enemies he has made. Let's start with |
| 0:22.2 | the current controversy surrounding his latest film, The Apprentice, which provides a fictionalized |
| 0:27.9 | but true-to-life portrait of Donald Trump's early years as a New York City real estate developer. |
| 0:34.6 | His key ally in this rise to fame and riches was a ruthless, |
| 0:38.2 | ethically dubious lawyer Roy Cohn, who instilled in the young Trump an approach to power, |
| 0:44.0 | to the rules and to the truth, which foreshadows the Trump political career. That is the movie's |
| 0:50.1 | premise, and it includes scenes and events which today's team Trump say are nothing but lies. |
| 0:56.9 | Outrage is not a reaction Ali Abassi is unfamiliar with. His previous film, Holy Spider, told the |
| 1:03.7 | story of a serial murderer of women in the Iranian holy city of Mashad. The Iranian government refused |
| 1:09.7 | to allow Abassi to shoot the film in the land of his birth, and they later Mashad. The Iranian government refused to allow Abasi to shoot the film in the |
| 1:11.9 | land of his birth, and they later banned it. The director actually left Iran for Scandinavia as a student, |
| 1:18.5 | and he is now a vocal opponent of the theocratic regime. In essence, he is an artistic outsider, |
| 1:25.4 | focusing his lens on stories which many powerful interests would prefer to leave |
| 1:30.3 | untold. But does that mean politics is his main motivation? Well, he joins me now. Ali Abasi, |
| 1:38.0 | welcome to hard talk. We have to start with the movie, The Apprentice, just released. But it's a project that you have |
| 1:46.6 | been working on for the best part of six years. Why so long in the gestation? Well, when I |
| 1:55.0 | joined the team on 2018 to develop the project, I was thinking that it's going to be a quick one, you know. |
| 2:02.6 | He was still president at the time. He was still president. And I think it started by Gabe Sherman, |
... |
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