Lead actor William Hurt broke his leg in an off-set accident a few days after filming started. The injury was so bad that he had to be replaced by actor Bill Pullman.
Shortly before the premiere, the producer of the movie, Piotr Wozniak-Starak, died in an apparent boating accident. His body was found in a lake with extensive trauma to his skull.
Though the story is fictional, the director Lukasz Kosmicki has two films about real-life espionage in his resume. In both of them he was the cinematographer. One is "Departament IV" (1996), a documentary about ideological warfare - about actions of the secret police, including surveillance, smear jobs and assassinations, against priests in Soviet-influenced Poland. The other is "Gry uliczne" (1996), a feature revolving around the real-life murder of anti-government activist Stanislaw Pyjas by the secret police.
While looking at a map in the Palace of Culture, Mansky (clumsily) recites the moves to the Blumenfeld Countergambit opening: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.d5 b5.