In 1999, a video was published on the Internet where two Chechen soldiers killed a Russian hostage soldier by cutting his throat. The moment of his agony was used as audio footage for the scene where one of the two hostages was beheaded.
The actors who played the two main Chechen characters are not Chechens: Giorgi Gurgulia (Aslan) is Georgian and Evklid Kyurdzidis (Ruslan) is Greek.