Carmen Meets Borat
International Showcase
(Netherlands, 2008, 84 mins)
In English and Romanian with English subtitles
DigiBeta - NTSC
US Premiere
Directed By: Mercedes Stalenhoef
Producer: Pieter van Huystee
Screenwriter: Mercedes Stalenhoef
Cinematographer: Erik van Empel
Editor: Gys Zevenbergen
Ionela has dreams of getting out of Glod, the poor Roma village where she lives with her family. Inspired by her middle name, Carmen, she longs for Spain and escape from the neighbors who call her “granny” because she’s still unmarried at age seventeen. Everything changes in the aftermath of a visit by a Hollywood movie crew when the townspeople realize that they have been portrayed as backward Kazakhs in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat. Soon, TV crews arrive followed by lawyers who raise the town’s hopes of a lawsuit payday.
Documentarian Mercedes Stalenhoef skillfully walks the line of showing what’s funny about village life and its characters without condescending to her subjects. Although the Borat affair gives the film remarkable twists and turns, Stalenhoef’s real concern is with the daily life of the village and the relationship between Ionela and her father. Behind the larger drama of greed and jealousy, the film is an intimate, funny, and insightful portrait of a free spirit trying to decide whether to spread her wings or build a nest.
-- Rachel Rosen
If you like this film, try these:
(France , Cameroon , 2009, 70mins)
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