STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Swedish cinema lovers breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after a toy movie projector that inspired famed director Ingmar Bergman as a child was found after having been feared stolen, a Bergman Foundation spokeswoman said.

Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker who put Swedish cinema on the map, received the projector, known as a cinematograph, when he was 10 years old.

It was reported missing Jan. 11 from the Swedish Foreign Ministry, where it was on display as part of an exhibition called "Before Ingmar became Bergman," said Ase Kleveland, head of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

Ministry officials had feared the historic projector was stolen, but it was found Thursday in a store room at the Swedish Institute, which is entrusted with informing the world about Sweden.

"We are flabbergasted. We have no idea how it ended up here," institute spokesman Lars Hedenstedt said.

As a child, Bergman got the projector in exchange for an unknown number of tin soldiers from his big brother, Kleveland said.

"This cinematograph made Bergman interested in making movies," she said. "He has talked about it in his books and it is also a central theme in some of his films. That's why it has a very big cultural-historical value."

Swedish media speculated the projector was worth up to 50 million kronor ($6.6 million), but Kleveland could not confirm the value.

Bergman, widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, first gained international attention with Smiles of a Summer Night, a 1955 romantic comedy that inspired the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music.

But it was The Seventh Seal, released two years later, that riveted critics and audiences. An allegorical tale of the medieval plague, it contains one of cinema's most famous scenes–a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of Death.

Bergman, whose 1983 film Fanny and Alexander won an Oscar for best foreign film, made about 60 movies before retiring from film making.

The Ingmar Bergman Foundation was set up in 2002 with the objective of administering, preserving and providing information about Bergman's collected artistic works.