By Mathew Kumar

Today’s Picks:
2 p.m. – Best Worst Movie (ROM) – 3/5
4 p.m. – Zombie Girl: The Movie (The Royal)
4 p.m. – Art & Copy (Isabel Bader, pictured above)
4:30 p.m. – Carmen Meets Borat (ROM) – 4/5
9:45 p.m. – Action Boys (Innis Town Hall)
11:59 p.m. – Soulwax: Part of the Weekend Never Dies (Bloor)
After the jump, a review for today’s screenings of Carmen Meets Borat.

Carmen Meets Borat (Mercedes Stalenhoef)
BY ASHLEY CARTER
Carmen Meets Borat is the kind of doc where its subject alone can pack out the Bloor Cinema on a Saturday evening (and it did), but its content is just as deserving of such a gigantic group. Originally conceived as a document of one teenage girl’s dream of getting out of Glod (her impoverished village in Romania), this vérité-style film grew into something much bigger than planned with the arrival of Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat. While director Mercedes Stalenhoef never intended to include Cohen’s film in her own story, it quickly becomes apparent that it and Cohen’s influence on the town are inseparable, as villagers begin to conceptualize the possibilities of a landmark lawsuit against Cohen and 20th Century Fox, and neighbours are driven apart by distrust and greed. With a compelling dramatic arc so perfectly intermingled with humour and pathos and some insanely entertaining villagers (who we can now enjoy laughing with instead of at, how about that), documentaries like Carmen Meets Borat are impossible to plan or predict, which is a large part of what makes Stalenhoef’s vision so earnest. Invested in her characters long before their appearance on movie screens and ABC News, she offers a sympathetic look at a group of people who have been played for fools, without ever making them appear foolish. And in keeping with that, she didn’t get clearance for any of the Borat clips used within the doc. Very nice. 4/5
Carmen Meets Borat screens tonight at 4:30 p.m. at the ROM.