This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross, a recurring theme in screenwriter and director James Gray's films,

including the immigrant and little Odessa, is what it's like to be an immigrant or the child of immigrants in America.

Gray's other films include the yards, two lovers, the loss city of Z and at Astra.

His new film, Armageddon Time, is based on his own childhood, as the grandchild of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine,

who fled antisemitism in the 1920s.

Said in 1980, when the child Paul is 11 and living in Queens, New York, the film is about his reaction to hearing some of his grandparents' stories,

and about learning how race and class in America often predetermine the course of your life.

Paul is the son of a working-class father and a mother who comes from a more prosperous immigrant family.

Although Paul's grandparents fled antisemitism, and his whole family considers itself liberal, they're blind to their own racism.

Paul's best friend, Johnny, is black. They're both considered troublemakers in school, but Paul's family pulls him from public school and away from Johnny.

They send him to a private school, based on the school James Gray attended.

Paul felt rich in public school, but realizes he's far from it, after he arrives in the private school,

which his grandfather is paying for because Paul's father, who's a plumber, can't afford it.

In the film, Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, is on the board of trustees of the school and as a financial donor.

Justice he was in the private school James Gray attended.

In this scene on Paul's first day at the school, Fred Trump's sister, Mary Ann Trump, who at the time was an assistant US attorney,

gives a motivational speech to these very privileged students.

The speech is James Gray's attempt to recreate the speech he heard her give when he was in school.

Mary Ann Trump is played by Jessica Chastain.

Today, I'm not here to give you the same old talk.

Today, I'm going to give a two straight.

You're going to want to go to a good college. You're going to want to succeed.

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