We all hate Borat: The poor Romanian villagers humiliated by Sacha Baron Cohen's spoof documentary



Seventeen-year-old Carmen Ciorebea may be a listless teenager, but she is resolute about one thing. 'Glod is a terrible, terrible village. Nothing ever happens and there is nothing beautiful to see here,' she sighs. 'I will never be happy here.'

Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat

She is not alone in these sentiments, which are shared by many in the poverty-stricken Romanian village, nestled in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains north-west of Bucharest. Life is hard here: toilets are little more than sheltered holes in the ground, and horses and donkeys are the only source of transport. Most people eke out a living peddling scrap iron or working scrubby patches of land.



So when a Hollywood film crew descended on Glod three years ago to make a 'documentary' about their lives, many of the 1,000 residents were only too happy to take the £3 that was offered to anyone who participated.

If the tall, lanky and moustached presenter seemed a little odd, who were they to question the ways of the world of television? They said nothing when this rather manic Borat character installed a cow in one of their homes, or was filmed being transported in a car, which, although perfectly serviceable, should, he insisted, be pulled along by a horse.

But then the villagers of Glod were not to know that Borat, aka the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was not making a documentary but a comedy film, with some of the laughs very much at their expense.



In it, Glod and its residents would play the part of Borat's home town in Kazakhstan. Only when watching the film on the small, crackly TV in their local bar, did the truth start to dawn: here they were, portrayed as a backward group of rapists, abortionists and prostitutes, who happily also engage in casual incest.



One local girl, 'cast' as Borat's sister, is described as the 'number-four prostitute in the whole of Kazakhstan'. An elderly lady unwittingly plays the part of Borat's '47-year-old' mother. The village mechanic is cast as the local abortionist. All of them were dumbfounded - their horror captured by a TV crew who returned to Glod to witness the aftermath of the Borat bandwagon for a forthcoming documentary. In Storyville: When Borat Came To Town, they show the fallout among villagers as they confront their humiliation and try to seek legal recompense.



Little, on the surface, has changed two years after Baron Cohen's crew departed. The village still has no sewerage or running water, and few of the residents have regular work. Most young girls are encouraged to marry at 15 or 16. At 17, Carmen, granddaughter of the mechanic-cum-abortionist' Spiridom Ciorebea, is already, her father Ion relates, considered a 'granny' because she has refused to wed.



This time round, the villagers are far more hostile to the presence of a camera crew. Many refuse to be filmed, others ask for money. Those that do agree to talk relate their anger and shame about the way they were portrayed.



Sacha Baron Cohen with the residents of Glod in the film

For Spiridom, the revelation of his role was a profound shock. 'They portrayed me as a gynaecologist and that I do abortions. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not a criminal. I don't do abortions, and that's the thing that bothers me most. If it was a documentary that was really about us, I wouldn't mind.'



Another resident, Nicolae Tudorache - who was told at the time that the rubber sex toy filmmakers attached to his amputated arm was, in fact, a prosthetic - was equally devastated. 'It is disgusting. They conned us into doing all these things and never told us anything about what was going on. They made us look like primitives; like uncivilised savages.



They made millions, but only paid us about £3.'



Nor was their humiliation the only issue the villagers had to contend with: in the aftermath of the film, lawyers arrived at the village promising to secure compensation for the community. Among them were the German lawyer Michael Witti, and Ed Fagan, a US attorney who helped win victims of the Holocaust a settlement of £653 million after filing lawsuits against Swiss banks that had allegedly failed to repay money stolen by the Nazis.



As BBC cameras watch, Fagan is shown at a Spiridom family meeting as Ion and Carmen vow revenge. 'My job,' says Fagan, 'is to make Baron Cohen pay. I want you to mess up his life, like he messed up your life. You can kill his career.' The lawsuit, Fagan explains, could be worth as much as £15 million.



Exploited: Spiridom (left) and Ion Ciorebea

For Ion, the lawyer's promises represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - with that kind of money, he could transform Glod, bring running water to the village, and set up a manufacturing industry that would provide everyone with safe and secure work.

As the film reveals, not everyone was convinced. One local resident, who declines to be named, rejects the lawyer's approaches with a declaration of his own. 'You make fun of me and I don't trust you. You come with your pockets full of money, I don't want that.' Ion remained unbowed, however: he was persuaded by the lawyers, alongside his grandfather and Nico Tudorache, to become one of three plaintiffs representing the village in a lawsuit against Cohen and the film-makers Twentieth Century Fox.

The three men left the village to fly to the US, where they hoped to attend the Oscars and confront Baron Cohen.



It was an ambitious notion - and a notion it remained. Unable to obtain visas to enter the US, the three villagers just presented a petition to the London offices of Twentieth Century Fox before being escorted off the premises by security. As Ion later reflects, 'It is chaos. I don't know what the lawyers want to do with us.'



A year later, he is still unable to answer the question. So far, the compensation claim has stalled. The lawyers no longer visit the village or even return Ion's calls. The stress of fighting for compensation has taken its toll on Ion's health and he has had a heart attack. 'I don't care about anything any more - I can't handle it,' he says. 'The villagers don't believe me. They think I've got the money. I've got a lot of enemies now.



We are ridiculed once again. First with the movie and then with the lawsuit.'



His daughter feels her father's anguish. ' Daddy feels bad because he promised the villagers improvements he hasn't been able to carry out,' Carmen says. She, at least, has some form of happy ending: she has married a local boy and is now expecting their first child.'



She now believes that she may be happy in Glod after all. Sacha Baron Cohen and his film crew have left the villagers nursing a bitterness that will take many years to evaporate. Little wonder his name is mud in this muddy village - and his fate assured should he ever try and return. 'We will kill him,' one villager vows.

Storyville: When Borat Came To Town, BBC4, 27 October, 10pm.