The first Romanian film nominated for the Academy Award as 'Best Foreign-Language Film' / 'Best International Feature Film'. (It's actually the first Romanian-language film nominated for any Academy Award, let alone in two categories.)
On Metacritic's list of '50 Best Movies of 2020' as No.3, the highest ranking of any documentary.
Romania had its next cycle of legislative and local elections in 2020, four years after the election depicted in this film in which the Social Democratic Party (PSD) regained power, and a few months after this film's release in Romania. After the Dec 2020 legislative elections, a coalition of parties opposed to the PSD formed a government. Some were new parties founded on anti-corruption platforms (USR, PLUS) while others were older centre-right parties (PNL, UDMR). Vlad Voiculescu, who features prominently in this film as health minister for the temporary non-partisan government, is health minister again as a member of PLUS. Meanwhile, in the Sept 2020 local elections, Nicusor Dan, the founder of USR, defeated PSD's Gabriela Vranceanu-Firea a to become mayor of Bucharest. Firea also features prominently in this film as an opponent of Voiculescu's new health policies.
The director offered to leave his footage of the Sports Gazette newsroom at the newsroom during the shoot, in order to protect the journalists and whistleblowers. The journalists trusted the director to safeguard the footage in multiple unknown places.
Only the 2nd feature film to be nominated at the Academy Awards for both 'Best Documentary Feature' and 'Best Foreign-Language Film' / 'Best International Feature Film', after Honeyland (2019).