In the "chaotic" documentary about Melania Trump, many technicians do not want to appear in the credits.

BarcelonaMelaniaThe documentary about the First Lady of the United States, which premieres this Friday simultaneously in 27 countries, including ours, will be one of the most heavily promoted documentary films in history: according to Matthew Belloni, a journalist specializing in the Hollywood industry.Amazon will invest nearly €30 million in promoting a film that, after a bidding war with Disney and Paramount, it acquired a few months ago for the astonishing sum of €33 million. However, two days before its release, no press screenings have taken place, either in the United States or anywhere else in the world. Neither film critics nor political journalists have seen it; only the guests at a private screening held on Saturday at the White House. Among those present were former boxer Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan, Madrid native Georgina Rodríguez, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

It's a lucrative deal for Melania Trump, executive producer of the documentary. According to The Wall Street JournalThe first lady pockets $23 million for the deal. But Amazon's total investment, exceeding $60 million, doesn't seem easy to recoup: although Donald Trump claimed on Monday on Truth Social that tickets "are selling fast," Boxoffice.com's projections for the opening in 1,400 theaters in the United States and Canada point to a box office of $4 million, while National Research Group's surveys are more optimistic. In any case, it seems increasingly difficult for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, to argue that acquiring the film isn't a strategic move to curry favor with the Trump administration: Amazon is one of the companies with the most contracts with the federal government, as is Bezos's aerospace company, Blue Origin.

A director accused of rape

According to the promotional material, Melania It focuses on the twenty days leading up to Donald Trump's second inauguration in 2025. The documentary follows the protagonist during the inauguration preparations as she "navigates the complexities of a transition in the White House and her family's return to the nation's capital." The documentary's director is Brett Ratner, known for the action saga Rush hour and the superhero movie X-Men: The Last Stand, which according The Hollywood Reporter He lived at Mar-a-Lago during filming. Ratner hadn't directed a film since 2017, when, at the height of the Me Too movement, he was accused of rape by a former employee; shortly afterward, six women accused him of sexual assault and harassment, including actresses Natasha Henstridge and Olivia Munn, who claimed the director masturbated in front of her. Warner Bros. immediately canceled all projects with Ratner, who then became persona non grata in Hollywood.

Ratner is, precisely, the focus of criticism from members of the documentary's technical team who have had access to it. Rolling StoneIn a report, the filming was described as "very disorganized and chaotic," involving three production teams in Florida, Washington, and New York, each with a different director of photography. According to an anonymous source, two-thirds of the New York crew requested that their names not appear in the documentary's credits. "I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the propagandistic dimension of the documentary," another crew member stated. "But the worst thing about working on this project was Brett Ratner."

Sources with whom he spoke Rolling Stone Ratner is accused of always leaving a trail of trash in his wake, throwing orange peels or gum wrappers at crew members as if he were oblivious to their existence. One source recalls that, during a long day of filming when the crew wasn't allowed to stop for lunch or dinner, Ratner had food brought to him and devoured it in front of everyone. "He's either an idiot or he has no consideration whatsoever, given that everyone around him was working without being able to eat," says one of the crew members. In contrast, the production team claims to have had no problems with Melania Trump, whom they describe as "a nice person, the complete opposite of Brett Ratner."

A few weeks ago, Ratner appeared in a declassified photograph from the Epstein dossier in the company of Jean-Luc Brunel, a former modeling agent linked to the Epstein scandal, who was found dead in his Paris jail cell where he was being held awaiting trial for child rape. Ratner claims he never met Jeffrey Epstein personally, but he seems to have a good relationship with a close friend of Epstein's, Donald Trump. In fact, the US president personally pressured Paramount Studios a few months ago to produce a new installment of the saga directed by Ratner. Rush hourAnd thanks to the intervention, production is already underway at the studios run by David Ellison, son of one of Trump's main campaign donors, Larry Ellison.