Trivia / Enemy at the Gates

• Banned in China: Narrowly averted. A group of Stalingrad veterans were so offended at the depiction of the Red Army that they unsuccessfully lobbied to the Russian government to have the Russian release cancelled.
• California Doubling: The film was mostly shot in Germany. The crossing of the Volga was done on the Altdöberner See, a man-made lake in the south of Brandenburg state.
• Fake Nationality: The American Ed Harris as the German Major König.
• Fake Russian: The main cast on the Soviet side is played by either British or American actors (or both in the case of Rachel Weisz).
• Preview Piggybacking: The film was advertised in French retail boxes of the (World War II-related) video game Commandos 2: Men of Courage.
• Production Posse: Director Jean-Jacques Annaud collaborated with his usual screenwriter Alain Godard, cinematographer Robert Fraisse, composer James Horner, and actor Ron Perlman.
• Referenced by...:
  • The very first mission of the video game Commandos 3: Destination Berlin is a love letter to the film, with a Sniper Duel in Stalingrad and the Children's Khorovod fountain/Barmaley Fountain.
  • The Call of Duty series would also go on to reference this film several times, most notably the crossing of the Volga in the original game, and in Call of Duty: World at War, which has an entire level themed after this movie, from sniping German soldiers in a fountain to a sniper shootout in a department store.
• Similarly Named Works: In some European countries, the film is simply titled Stalingrad (with Enemy at the Gates as secondary title in some cases) — the same as the 1993 German film and the 2013 Russian film.

---