Sacha Baron Cohen retired Ali G. Amazon revived the caricature. Cinemas can refuse it.
Ali G: Who Iz I?, written, directed and produced by and starring Sacha Baron Cohen for Amazon MGM Studios, opens in cinemas on 23 October 2026, with Sony Pictures distributing internationally. Sony Pictures UK is selling it with the line 'He iz back. We ain't liable.' The character is a white comedian's caricature of Black British street culture, and the communities imitated said so from the start: the Guardian reported Black British comedians' verdict under the headline 'Comics find Ali G is an alibi for racism' in January 2000, Felix Dexter said the act lets 'the liberal middle classes laugh at black street culture' in comfort, and Jeanette Winterson asked what separates it from the Black and White Minstrels. The catalogue behind it drew the same complaint from Kazakh and Arab communities over Borat and The Dictator, in letters to Amazon and the film academies that this campaign quotes. Baron Cohen retired the character himself in December 2007. Studios sell films, but cinemas choose them, and no film is owed a screen. This campaign sends a personalised letter, in your name, to the booking, guest-relations and press desks of major cinema chains in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East, every address verified on the chain's own official site, asking each chain to leave the film off its screens, to publish its reasoning if it screens it anyway, and to reply stating its position. Chains in non-English markets receive a hand-written letter in their own language. Picturehouse Cinemas has already responded: it is not planning to screen the film, so Picturehouse no longer receives letters and the campaign continues with the chains that have yet to answer. The campaign now also writes to the BBFC, the body that must certify the film before UK cinemas can show it, asking it to apply its own discrimination guidelines to the classification decision and publish its reasoning; past participants can send just that one new letter.
2w ago