Melania Trump – born Melanija Knavs – has led an undeniably fascinating life. Raised in the 1970s, in what was then Yugoslavia, she grew up in a state-run housing complex in present-day Slovenia. A teenage modelling contract saw her whisked around Europe and then, in the Nineties, to the United States, where she eventually met the unassuming, mild-mannered property tycoon, Donald Trump. It is a journey that bridges Europe and America, an aspirational story of a little girl with nothing but a perfect jawline; the sort of tale that draws the eye of Hollywood. Of course, this is all information I have extracted from Melania Trump’s Wikipedia page, because it is strikingly absent from the new Amazon documentary, Melania, which has just received a mysterious theatrical release.
Instead, Melania focuses on 20 days running up to the second Trump inauguration in January 2025. “Everyone wants to know,” Melania growls in voiceover, “so here it is.” Perhaps her lack of specificity on what exactly people want to know is deliberate. The documentary – with a runtime of 104 minutes – covers everything from the design of place settings and the width of hat ribbons to her excitement for her son Barron’s hypothetical “beautiful family” and sadness at the 2024 death of her mother. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about my mother,” she laments in the film’s signature voiceover, while the camera holds a shot of the coffin of President Carter. This is American history through the idiosyncratic prism of a woman who is part-puppet of the regime, part-delusional creative, and part-symbol of America’s immigrant community.
