Although the plot of the film mainly takes place in Tampere, most of the film was shot in Helsinki and in it's neighboring areas. The film group spent only five days in Tampere.
Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden was assassinated only a few months before the filming was about to begin. Director Matti Kassila thought that after such a tragic event it would be politically impossible to make a fiction film about a madman, whose about to assassinate the President of Finland. But the Finnish Police Administration thought that it would be the right time to make such a film.
The president's name in the film is never mentioned, but the actor Tarmo Manni who plays him is made up to look exactly like the former Finnish president Urho Kekkonen.
Urho Kekkonen, the former Finnish president, died at the same time, when the last shots of the film were taken.