The Forgotten Lawsuit That Exposed the Dark Side of the Movie ‘Borat’
When Borat opened in 2006, audiences poured into theaters for Sacha Baron Cohen’s outrageous satire. The film climbed to number one at the box office, cleared $90 million in the U.S. within weeks, and became the subject of endless arguments. Yet behind the noise of ticket sales and shocked laughter lay a quieter story, one that began in a poor Romanian village called Glod.
How The Villagers Fought Back
For the filmmakers, Glod was simply a backdrop for Borat’s invented hometown. For the people who lived there, it was their real community, suddenly turned into a global punchline. They later said they’d been told the project was a documentary about poverty. Payments were minimal—some recalled receiving just three euros—and the result was anger, embarrassment, and eventually a $30 million lawsuit against a major studio.
The tipping point came when locals such as Nicolae Todorache and Spiridom Ciorebea saw themselves on screen. Todorache, a grandfather who had lost an arm, appeared fitted with a crude sexual prop. Ciorebea, a village mechanic, was introduced as though he were a doctor performing illegal abortions. To them, this wasn’t satire. It was exploitation that exposed their hardships for the world’s amusement.
In 2006, Todorache and Ciorebea filed suit in New York. They sought damages and asked the court to block screenings unless their scenes were cut. Their lawyer argued that, unlike the American students or etiquette coaches who also complained about the film, these villagers could not shrug off the joke. They spoke no English, had no context for the satire, and felt singled out in ways that went far beyond a prank.
A Hollywood Studio Versus A Village Without Running Water
Fox, the studio behind “Borat,” stood firm. A spokesman dismissed the claims outright and insisted that no one in Romania was told the movie was a documentary. To the studio, Glod was simply a set dressed up as a Kazakh village, and everyone knew they were in a film. But that wasn’t how it felt to the residents.
Glod had cable TV but no running water. Many families washed clothes in the stream. When offered a few euros to appear, they thought they were helping spotlight their struggles. Instead, they felt mocked on a global scale.
But the villagers’ anger wasn’t just about reputation. Some, like Ion Ciorebea, even had ambitious plans for what compensation could mean. He wanted to bring water pipes into the village, open a juice factory, and create jobs. Hollywood, however, had the lawyers, the power, and the momentum of a global hit on its side.
In 2008, their case was dismissed by a U.S. judge who ruled the allegations needed more detail to succeed. The villagers’ lawyers tried to refile, but the chances of outlasting Fox in court were slim. No compensation ever reached Glod, and the film continued to rake in profits worldwide, totaling more than $260 million globally.
The villagers’ lawsuit also exposed a bigger theme around Baron Cohen’s brand of comedy. How far is too far when tricking real people? Americans who sued, like the South Carolina fraternity brothers or the etiquette coach, had cases thrown out, and most were seen as part of the joke. But Glod stood apart. These were some of the poorest people in Europe, paid pocket change, and cast as global caricatures without the power to fight back.