It’s actually happening.
After rumors started to fly over the summer that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen had secretly filmed a sequel to his 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and a mysterious video appeared on the @KazakhstanGovt Twitter account congratulating “Premier Trump” on his big debate victory Tuesday night, the official trailer finally dropped on Thursday.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery Of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on October 23, just before the 2020 election. And the trailer reveals that it was one of the few movies filmed during the coronavirus pandemic.
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The premise is that after Borat Sagdiyev brought “great shame” to Kazakhstan with his first film, he has been instructed to return to America to carry out a “secret mission.” The problem, as we see in the opening scenes, is that most Americans recognize him now so he must employ a series of elaborate disguises—much like Baron Cohen was forced to do for his recent Showtime series Who Is America?
Borat’s mission, it seems, is to marry off his daughter to Vice President Mike Pence (or Mikhael Pence as his character is named on IMDb, which also lists Rudy Giuliani as playing himself). Along the way, he visits what he thinks is an abortion clinic but is actually a pro-life “Women’s Health Center” and “quarantines” with a group of right-wing men who apparently missed out on the original movie.
“What is more dangerous, this virus or the Democrat?” Borat asked him, to which they unanimously reply, “Democrats.”
But the climax of the trailer—and presumably the movie—comes at CPAC 2020 where Borat puts on a fairly convincing Trump costume and offers up his daughter to Pence during his speech. “Michael Pennis, I brought a girl for you!” he shouts from the crowd.
What’s remarkable now looking back is that conservative websites like the Daily Caller actually covered the incident back in February without knowing that Baron Cohen was behind the prank, noting that “less than 10 minutes into the vice president’s remarks, a protester dressed like the president stood up near the front of the audience and began yelling about Trump and ‘white supremacy.’”
In video footage captured from the moment, the crowd starts chanting “USA! USA!” to drown out Baron Cohen, who can be seen holding a woman in a sack over his shoulder. That alone should have been a tip-off following the stunt he pulled with Pamela Anderson for the first Borat film. Security walked Baron Cohen and his co-star out of the room as Pence boasted about Trump’s impressive victory in his more-or-less uncontested New Hampshire primary.
Among the biggest remaining questions ahead of the film’s release is whether Baron Cohen’s epic prank on a right-wing militia rally in Olympia, Washington, back in June was for this movie or some other secret project.
For more, listen to Sacha Baron Cohen on The Last Laugh podcast.
