Each scene is shot with one take where the camera stands still as the actors embrace the frame (the camera moves once in the entire film, in the railway station scene).
It is the first film in a trilogy, followed by You, the Living (2007) and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014).
The quotations used as a recurring motif are from the work of Peruvian poet César Vallejo: "Traspié entre dos estrellas" ("Stumble Between Two Stars").
According to Roger Ebert, the film "is a collision at the intersection of farce and tragedy--the apocalypse as a joke on us."