Ali G Is Back — But Only for a Blink: Sacha Baron Cohen's Comeback Divides Opinion
More than two decades after Ali G last ruled the airwaves, Sacha Baron Cohen has brought the character back to the big screen — and the return is already divisive. The new film, Ali G: Who Iz I?, is the comedian's directorial debut, and its cinema life is being measured in days rather than weeks.
A comeback more than 20 years in the making
Ali G first emerged in a British television segment before fronting Da Ali G Show, where Baron Cohen, in character, interviewed public figures who were not in on the joke, Agence France-Presse (AFP) notes. The new mockumentary picks up the character's life since, in the film's own phrase, "the world went to hell", alongside his pregnant girlfriend Julie, played by Morgana Robinson. According to The Jerusalem Post, the film was shot in complete secrecy over the past year, and Baron Cohen premiered it on 14 October 2026 at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles.
A cinema window measured in days
The Jerusalem Post, reporting on the film's cinema rollout on 25 October 2026, says it will be in cinemas for just two days, on Friday and Saturday. The fleeting window has become part of the story itself.
At the Los Angeles premiere, Baron Cohen stayed fully in character on the red carpet. Asked by Variety about Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, he joked that Bezos had handed over "cash money" for a documentary about Ali G's life — on one condition, uInterview reports: that Bezos himself would not appear in it.
Why the return has divided opinion
Not everyone is cheering. The Jerusalem Post reports that NewsCord, a British media-monitoring platform, launched a campaign a day after the trailer was released, urging cinemas worldwide to refuse to screen the film, citing earlier criticism including comments by Black comedians who called Ali G "an alibi for racism" in 2000. Sony Pictures UK's slogan — "He's back. We're not responsible" — has only added fuel, the paper notes. And Variety's review, quoted by AFP, said the film has "a few scattered giggles, but it's dawdling and cumbersome, and far less 'relevant' than it thinks".
The defence: a "problematic dinosaur"
Baron Cohen himself has framed the backlash as the point. "I brought back Ali G because he is a problematic dinosaur," he told journalists, according to AFP. "I just love the idea of dropping him into today's world." Whatever audiences make of it, Ali G's return was never going to pass quietly.
Sources: The Jerusalem Post, 25 October 2026; Agence France-Presse reports via Philstar and The Sun, 24 October 2026; uInterview's report of Baron Cohen's Variety red-carpet remarks, 25 October 2026.