Go to content
In a poor Rumanian village, the Roma teenager Ionela Carmen dreams of a life as a Spanish beauty. She longs to escape the bleakness of Glod, where men are usually drunk and women gossip while trying to scrape a living. To increase her chances of a future elsewhere, Carmen learns a little Spanish watching Spanish-spoken soaps on TV. She spends her days in her father's thriving supermarket and bar and flirts a little with fellow-villager Christi. Her simple existence changes completely when Hollywood star Sasha Baron Cohen calls at the village with a film crew. The villagers have no idea what his intentions are, but they gladly allow him to direct them for a pittance. Watching TV, they find out he ridicules them as Borat in his film. Carmen's father instigates a lawsuit. Shrewd foreign lawyers offer him their services. Everybody falls under the spell of the 'big money'. In the streets, people have less and less fun. A crisis in adolescent Carmen's family makes the reversal complete.

Credits

Sound Design
Production company
Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
TV company
IKON TV
Distributor NL
Cinema Delicatessen

Title: Carmen Meets Borat
Year: 2008
Duration : 1 hour, 25 minutes
Category: Long Documentary
Edition: NFF 2009

Gouden Kalf nominees

Beste Lange Documentaire (2009)
Mercedes Stalenhoef
Beste Muziek (2009)
Vincent van Warmerdam

NFF Archive

You are now in the NFF Archive. The archive contains contains information on film, TV and interactive productions that were screened at past festival editions. The NFF does not dispose of this material. For this, please contact the producer, distributor or broadcaster. Sometimes, older films can also be found at the Eye Film Museum or the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Stills

Still
Still
Still
Still