The first of these foreign produced epics I will be taking a look at is Mongol, a Russian, German, Kazakhstani, and Mongolian co-production about the early life of Genghis Khan and the first part of a planned trilogy.Mongol tells the story of Khan’s childhood and early adulthood quite strangely. It’s almost episodic in its nature as it drops the audience rather abruptly into different stages of Temudjin’s (Gengis Khan’s birth name) life.
 
Many viewers will appreciate this approach as the filmmakers have enough faith in the audience to show us what kind of man he is rather than tell us. We don’t learn about his character through extended voice overs or monologues given by friends or relatives. There are simply small moments that subtly reveal his courage, compassion, confidence and, most of all, his patience.