Kazakhstan embraces ‘Borat’ as

Photo: Kazakhstan Travel/YouTube

Kazakhstan embraces ‘Borat’ as ‘Very Nice’ in new tourism campaign [video]

Kazakhstan, home of the fictional Borat Sagdiyev, has adopted the character’s catchphrase “very nice!” in their new tourism campaign.

Kazakhstan embraces ‘Borat’ as

Photo: Kazakhstan Travel/YouTube

In a reverse move, the county of Kazakhstan is looking to embrace the slogan “very nice” from the film Borat rather than fight against it.

A tourism slogan

Yes, Kazakhstan has embraced Sacha Baron Cohen’s character’s catchphrase and turned it into the country’s tourism slogan.

According to The New York Times, many believe the film Borat actually put Kazakhstan on the map.

“People didn’t know where it was. In Kazakhstan, there’s pre-Borat and post-Borat.”

This of course refers to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the comedy that hit theaters in 2006.

In the film, Borat pretends to be a television reporter visiting America from the former Soviet republic, whose people supposedly drink horse urine, consider women property and celebrate an anti-Semitic version of the running of the bulls. 

The authoritarian Kazakh government banned the film, threatened to sue Cohen and took out a four-page advertisement in a newspaper defending the country’s honour.

And so when Cohen released a trailer on 29 September for a Borat sequel, which he developed in secret and which debuted on Amazon, the satirist was prepared for another fight with the Kazakh government. But, the government was pursued to use the catchphrase rather than put up a fight.

Also read: The first trailer for the secretly-filmed ‘Borat’ sequel released

That’s actually very nice!”

Dennis Keen and a friend, Yermek Utemissov, who helps foreign film companies arrange shoots in Kazakhstan, actually pitched the board of tourism. They got an immediate yes. The two worked pro bono to make four slickly produced, internet-friendly 12-second spots featuring people walking around Kazakhstan and observing that it’s “very nice.” In one, a man at a market drinks traditional fermented horse milk (not horse urine!) and says, “That’s actually very nice.”

It is said that the deputy chairman of the Kazakhstan tourism board, hadn’t seen the movie before its premiere, but he said he wasn’t concerned, either.

“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. We would love to work with Cohen, or maybe even have him film here.”

When Cohen learned that Kazakhstan had reversed itself and embraced his franchise, he offered a statement by email.

“This is a comedy, and the Kazakhstan in the film has nothing to do with the real country,” he wrote. “I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the U.S. knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world. The real Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with modern, proud society — the opposite of Borat’s version.”