Director Makes 'Real' Film in Revenge for 'Borat'

(Oct. 5) -- The lowdown, in Borat-ese: For make revenge on lewd (but popular) "Borat" movie, Kazakh director Erkin Rakishev make "real" film about former Soviet republic for showing it modern, cultured country.

Still seething four years after "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" -- Sacha Baron Cohen's highly successful "mockumentary" that, well, insulted the heck out of Kazakhstan -- Rakishev is currently filming his revenge, a movie titled "My Brother, Borat."

"I want to show modern Kazakhstan, as it is in reality," Rakishev told The New York Times. "After the original film, everyone around the world started mocking the Kazakh people. We were made to look crazy, wild, barbarous. It was not the truth."

He has a point.

Cohen's film, which was banned in Kazakhstan, in Russia and in every Arab country save Lebanon, depicted the predominantly Muslim Kazakhstan as an ungrammatical, hateful, backward country in which mechanics doubled as abortionists, children romped at the annual "Running of the Jews" and residents defecated into plastic bags.

The movie caused outrage in Kazakhstan. In 2009, when Cohen's native Britain played a World Cup qualifier in Almaty -- Kazakhstan's biggest city -- fans hanged effigies of Borat inside the stadium, Agence France-Press reported.

Rakishev says he is waging an "information war" by making "My Brother, Borat," set for release next year and featuring a bumbling, dense American named John who decides to visit Kazakhstan after seeing "Borat." Once he arrives, he is astonished to find a developed, progressive country, Rakishev told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Ahem. In the film, John also finds Borat's brother (played by a Russian actor), who is seduced by a floozy donkey. Then he gets pregnant and marries the ass.

So how is that different from Cohen's ribald brand of comedy?

"It's a black comedy," Rakishev told the Times. "If we do a comedy for the Kazakh people, in the West they may not understand it. In Kazakhstan, they understand a donkey."

It's not clear whether theater-goers outside Kazakhstan will ever see what Rakishev refers to as "the unauthorized sequel" to "Borat." He hopes Cohen, a British comedian who is Jewish, sees his film. He also hopes Cohen and the studio that produced "Borat" will challenge him over copyright issues.

"Hollywood, 20th Century Fox and Borat, I'll eat them alive," he said in a videotaped interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on the set of his film in Almaty. "Get ready, Borat!" he laughs, shaking his fist in front of the camera.

So far, no word from Cohen or the studio.