BERLIN - If ever a country needed rebranding, it’s Kazakhstan. The Central Asian nation’s international identity is shaped — unfairly, but inescapably — by the hit satirical film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which lampooned Kazakhstan as hopelessly backward, benighted and bigoted. A fresh reminder of how Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 mockumentary continues to shadow the nation’s image came just days ago, when a medal ceremony at a shooting competition in Kuwait honored the Kazakh gold medalist by mistakenly playing the “Borat” parody of Kazakhstan’s national anthem instead of the real one.
