Trivia for
Mongol (2007) More at IMDbPro »

• Kazakhstan's official submission in the Foreign Language Film category for the 80th Academy Awards (2008).
  
  
• The final battle scene required 1500 horses and riders, which had to be imported from Kazakhstan to Inner Mongolia in China (where the scene was shot). The riders however, were not professional actors, and needed 2 months of training prior to shooting.
  
  
• Some locations were so remote that the crew had to build roads to access them.
  
  
• Originally, 'Mongol' was the first part of a projected trilogy. However after the difficulty making this film, director Sergei Bodrov decided not to make the sequels. Several months after shooting wrapped however, he changed his mind again and decided to conflate his scripts for parts 2 and 3 into one script, and just do the one sequel, entitled 'The Great Kahn', it is scheduled to be released in 2010.
  
  
• The quotation used at the beginning of the film is a genuine Mongolian proverb: "Do not scorn a weak cub. He may become the brutal tiger."
  
  
• Director Sergei Bodrov and Production Designer Dashi Namdakov visited Mongolia's chief shaman in the capital city of Ulan Bator, so that they could ask permission to film a movie about Genghis Khan's life. The shaman told them that of all the people who have talked about making such a film, they were the only ones to ask his permission.
  
  
• The film took 14 months to shoot, and had a crew of 400 people (300 Chinese and 100 Russians), and over 1500 extras. Because there were so many different nationalities working on the film (Germans, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhstanis), a team of over 30 interpreters were on set at all times.
  
  
• The film was financed with money from Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan and the United States.
  
  
• The film was shot primarily in Kazakhstan and China. In China, the primary location was Inner Mongolia, a Mongolian province within China's borders which has more Mongolians living in it than Mongolia itself.
  
  
• The artist and sculptor Dashi Namdakov worked on the film as production designer. It represented his first job in the film industry.
  
  
• Prior to appearing in the film as Börte, actress Khulan Chuluun was studying to be a journalist, and had never acted before. Director Sergei Bodrov had sent casting director Gulshat Omarova to Mongolia to look for actresses for the role, but she was unable to find any. Disappointed with her failure, she went to the Chinese Embassy to renew her Visa so as to travel back to China. Whilst she was in the embassy, she saw Khulan by sheer accident, and approached her to ask about playing the role.
  
  
• Due to the isolation in which the film was made, viewing dailies was impossible. Exposed footage had to be sent to Hamburg in Germany to be processed, and then sent back to China for viewing, a process which took three weeks (usually dailies are processed and returned in 24 hours)
  
  
• Prior to filming the scenes of Temudgin (Tadanobu Asano) and Börte (Khulan Chuluun) together, director Sergei Bodrov kept the two actors apart, and never allowed them to meet, as he didn't want them to be too comfortable with one another, due to the fact that they are supposed to have separated for several years in the film.
  
  
• During the shooting of scenes involving a lot of extras, it was discovered that many of the extras were drinking alcohol between takes, which was causing problems amongst the mixed nationalities when shooting began. As such, the production purchased some footballs and the extras played soccer amongst themselves. However, after several weeks, they became bored with this, and soon returned to drinking, until second assistant director Zhao Meng had the idea to hire some female dancers and singers, and bring them onto location to perform for the extras.
  
  

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