Did you know that Oscar-winner Christian Bale played in a Soviet movie?

May 27 2024

Vladimir Grammatikov/Gorky Film Studio, Nordisk Tonefilm International, Filmhuset AS, 1987

As the actor himself admitted, filming in the Soviet Union helped him to gain important experience and feel independent and more mature.

One of the first projects in the career of the future ‘Dark Knight’ was the 1987 Soviet-Norwegian-Swedish movie ‘Mio, My Mio’. It is based on the children's fairy tale by Astrid Lindgren.

A nine-year-old boy named Bosse from Stockholm finds himself in a magical land where his name is Mio and he is the son of a king who must fight the evil knight Kato. And his new friend Yum-Yum, played by 13-year-old Bale, is to help him in this.

The initiator of the movie were the Swedes and Lindgren personally approved the candidacy of Soviet director Vladimir Grammatikov. Children for the roles of the main characters were sought among aspiring actors in the UK and Christian was selected among 65 applicants.

Filming ‘Mio, my Mio’ took place in Moscow, Scotland, Sweden and Crimea. When an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian SSR in April 1986, the entire film crew was urgently evacuated.

A month later, it returned and filming resumed. “We would have somebody with a Geiger counter at every dinner, scanning each plate,” the actor said years later.

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