Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve continued their promo for “Fjord” at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where Stan addressed a question about The Apprentice and Trump after a year in office—responding with blunt concern about media consolidation, censorship, thr
Sebastian Stan stepped into Cannes for the 2026 Film Festival with Renate Reinsve in tow, but the conversation quickly turned from cinema to the country beyond the screen.
On Tuesday. May 19. Stan and Reinsve attended a photo call for Fjord alongside writer/director Cristian Mungiu and co-stars Henrikke Lund-Olsen. Jonathan Ciprian Breazu. and Vanessa Ceban. The festival appearance kept the focus on the film—yet at the press conference. a question about Trump pulled everything into sharper. more urgent territory.
The moment began when a journalist asked Stan what he thought about The Apprentice now that Trump has been in office over a year. Stan had played Trump in the film, which premiered ahead of the 2024 election. When the question was posed, there was laughter in the room—brief, but telling.
Stan didn’t match the mood.
“It’s just not a laughing matter, to be honest. It isn’t,” he said, before laying out his view of where the U.S. stands.
“I think we’re in a really, really bad place. I really do. And to be honest with you. when you’re looking at what’s happening. right — if we’re talking about the consolidation of the media. censorship. threats. the supposed lawsuits that seemingly never end but don’t actually go anywhere. You know, the writing was on the wall. We encountered all that with the movie,” Stan told the room.
He also pointed to how uncertain the film’s Cannes run had been. “Three days before the festival, [we were] unsure if the movie was going to play the festival,” he said. He added that he hoped the attention would help the film last: “So maybe people are paying attention more to that film. I think it will stand the test of time for that.”.
Stan contrasted that uncertainty with the later visibility the film still managed to reach. “But we went through all of it, right before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and so on. So, I wish it wasn’t like that.”
Earlier in the press cycle, Stan had already said that playing Trump was the hardest thing he’d done—now, at Cannes, he framed those feelings inside a broader worry about how power, speech, and pressure are playing out.
Fjord’s Cannes synopsis describes a devout Romanian Norwegian couple. the Gheorghius. resettling in a village set in a distant fjord. where they grow close to their neighbours. the Halbergs. The film centers on their children and how community concerns sharpen when adolescent Elia Gheorghiu shows up at school with bruises—and when the community begins asking whether the traditional education the Gheorghius children receive from their parents might be connected.
At Tuesday’s Cannes appearance, Reinsve’s styling also drew attention—she wore Louis Vuitton.
For Stan and the team behind Fjord, the week’s work looked like standard festival promotion on the surface. Underneath, the press conference underscored something more fragile: a film release still shadowed by the kinds of obstacles he says he recognized firsthand.
Sebastian Stan Renate Reinsve Fjord Cannes Film Festival 2026 Cristian Mungiu Henrikke Lund-Olsen Jonathan Ciprian Breazu Vanessa Ceban The Apprentice Trump The Gheorghius Halbergs