Trivia

The film was spawned by actor Benoît Magimel's desire to do the a film based on the war in Algeria, which he talked about with documentary filmmaker Patrick Rotman as they were having lunch together. Coincidentally, Rotman was working on a documentary on the subject, L'ennemi intime (2002), and talked to his friend Florent-Emilio Siri about adapting it as a work of fiction.

Rather than a "war film", director Florent-Emilio Siri's intent was to make a film "about war in general".

The film was fully storyboarded before shooting.

While he maintains that this film is purely a work of fiction, screenwriter Patrick Rotman nevertheless claims that nearly every moment in the film is inspired by stories he heard while working on his documentary L'ennemi intime (2002).

Florent-Emilio Siri initially wanted to shoot in Kabylie, where the story is set, but gave up on the idea and set his eyes on Morocco when he realized the region didn't have any infrastructure capable of handling a big shoot such as this one.