Tajikistan bans `Dictator` as it does not suit nation’s `mentality`

London: Tajikistan has decided not to screen Sacha Boren Cohen’s latest blockbuster ‘The Dictator’ after authorities judged the movie to be incompatible with the nation’s ‘mentality’.

The film, which features Baron Cohen as General Aladeen, depicts a fictional Middle Eastern dictator risking his life to crush signs of democracy, has been refused a distribution licence, the Daily Mail reported. “It’s wrong to compare us with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and with other countries,” Daler Davlatov of the Tatan distribution company in Tajikistan told the Kyrgyz news website kloop.kg. “It’s incorrect because we have a different mentality. We’re not going to give Dictator a premiere because of these considerations,” he said. Tajikistan’s distributor of international movies, Tantana, insisted that it would instead encourage people to watch Will Smith’s Men in Black 3, according to reports. Baron Cohen has already denied that the role was an attack on Arabs and asserted the only people who would be offended by it would be “dictators and fans of dictatorship.” This is not the first time Cohen has had his work censored - in 2006 Russia banned his hit comedy film, Borat, which had been accused of poking fun at Moscow’s neighbour and close ally Kazakhstan. ANI