Trivia

There is no music, save for the theme on George's show, and background music at Anne's publishing party.

This film was the official submission of Austria for the Academy Awards in the 'Best Foreign-Language Film' category, but was disqualified then because it was not "predominantly shot in the official language of the submitting country," but rather in French. The controversy that ensued over that - as well as the virtually simultaneous disqualification of Italy's submission of the Arabic- and Hebrew-language film Private (2004) - prompted the foreign language committee to enact a rule change the following year that made any language acceptable in a foreign language submission - hence Canada's submission of a Hindi-language film in 2007 (Water (2005)) and Australia's of a German-language film in 2012 (Lore (2012)). Any language, that is, except English.

The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.

Voted "Best Film of the Noughties" by UK newspaper The Times.

In the scene in which George is seeing world news on TV, the news shows India's general election results held in the year 2004. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi of Congress Party are shown in the news.

Michael Haneke: [character name] Juliette Binoche's character is named Anne Laurent.

Michael Haneke: [character name] Daniel Auteuil's character is named Georges Laurent.