The scene where Salazar is smiling as he films a scorpion being devoured by ants is an homage to the beginning of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) where a group of children gleefully watch scorpions being eaten by ants .
Loosely based on an incident in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq in 2006 where U.S. Army soldiers raped and killed a young Iraqi girl along with her family.
The film was financed by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team.
The Sarabande movement of George Fridiric Handel's Keyboard Suite In D Minor which plays at the beginning of the French documentary is also the main theme of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975).
Chosen by the Cahiers Du Cinema magazine as the best movie of 2008.