Almost two decades after Borat famously brought the central-Asian country of Kazakhstan to our screens in his film ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’, the country has finally ‘given in’ and embraced the publicity.
Officially, the country has previously rejected Sascha Baron Cohen’s depiction of the country, which shows it as backwards, poor, sexist and also very anti-semitic.
The most recent contribution to the franchise is Cohen’s ‘Borat Subsequent Movie film’, available on Amazon Prime from the 23rd October, where he travels again to America and gets up to all manner of hijinks.
Kairat Sadvakassov, the deputy chairman of Kazakhstan’s tourism board, has told the New York Times that the board has finally given into the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ mindset.
‘In COVID times, when tourism spending is on hold, it was good to see the country mentioned in the media,’ he said. ‘Not in the nicest way, but it’s good to be out there.’
He went further to explain that the main reason behind the attitude change was attributable to an American exchange student named Dennis who had settled in Kazakhstan.
'Borat' portrays Kazakhstan as backwards and poor.
Dennis Keen, with colleague Yermek Utemissov, produced the new tourism video, which features locals commenting on the ‘very nice’ features of the country, the tagline made famous by the ‘Borat’ films.
Sascha Baron Cohen, the actor behind the franchise, appears happy that the country is finally on board, releasing a statement highlighting that the film version has nothing to do with the real country.
‘I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the US knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world. The real Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with a modern, proud society—the opposite of Borat’s version’ he said.
All we can say is - Very nice!