This was a production of "Southern Pictures", a branch of Southern Television (one of the regional ITV companies in Britain). The company had high hopes for the film, thinking it would get a cinema release and that its television premiere would thus be delayed. The film was quite costly, with an international star, Liv Ullmann, in the lead (her Norwegian accent is unexplained in the film) and with multiple Oscar-winning veteran Freddie Young in charge of the photography and Francois Truffaut's favorite composer, Georges Delerue, providing the music. The film was shown to an unenthusiastic response at the London Film Festival, and all plans for a wide cinema release were then scrapped; the film was shown on television very soon afterwards and then largely disappeared in the UK. Little more was heard of Southern Pictures, either.
The first of only two films to be made by the Southern Pictures company.
During the scene on the train, a man is seen reading a copy of the Financial Times that has the word 'Yugoslavia' clearly visible on one page. This suggests that the scene in question may have been filmed shortly after President Tito's death on 4th May 1980.
The film got a home videocassette release in 1981 or 1982 before disappearing into obscurity after Southern Television lost their broadcasting licence to TVS in 1982. With ownership rights unclear the film became forgotten about for over 30 years before it resurfaced on dvd in 2014.