Most actors speak more than one language in the film. Carice van Houten speaks four languages fluently in the course of the film: Hebrew in the scenes in Israel, German with Nazi soldiers, English with Canadian army personnel and Dutch for the majority of the film.
With a budget of approx. 16 million euros, this is the most expensive Dutch movie to date.
Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch, whose characters become romantically involved, were also in a real-life relationship for several years after the movie.
Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman got the idea for this movie while doing research for Soldier of Orange (1977). Instead of simply working the controversies surrounding the Dutch Resistance into the already top-heavy screenplay of that film, they decided to make a separate movie out of it. Verhoeven and Soeteman wrote the screenplay over a period of almost 20 years, and they finally solved many script problems by making the main character a woman.