Because Borat represents a bridge in comedy history. It is the last major comedy film made without the fear of going viral in real-time.

You can find detailed government documents, such as New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification records

The first thing you will notice when you find Borat on the Archive is the quality. It is not the 4K HDR version on Prime Video. It is usually a 700MB .AVI file from 2007, recorded off a French television station, with hard-coded Dutch subtitles and a watermark for a long-defunct torrent site.

These early clips are distinct from the polished Hollywood production. They are leaner, meaner, and often more uncomfortable. In the Archive’s collection of these episodes, we see Borat attending a hunting party in the American South, singing a fictional Kazakh song at a country and western bar, or attending an aristocratic dinner party in the UK.