This is the first film ever to be shot inside the United Nations Headquarters - locations include the General Assembly and the Security Council, as well as regular corridors and hallways of the complex. The cast and crew filmed on weekends in order not to disrupt the regular work week of the organization.
The movie is banned in Zimbabwe, the country on which the fictional D. R. of Matobo was based.
Nicole Kidman cites South African as the hardest to perform convincingly of all the accents she's undertaken throughout her career.
This is the only collaboration between Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. In 1996, when Kidman was overlooked for an Oscar nomination for her performance in Prête à tout (1995), she received a letter from Penn that said simply, "You were robbed". Kidman claims the letter was "as good as an Oscar nomination".