According to Roger Ebert, "this is a film about a man whose life gives him no source of joy, and denies him the consolation of ignorance. He misses, and he knows he misses. He has the willingness of a saint, but not the gift. He would take the suffering of the world on his shoulders, but he is not man enough."
The body of the raped little girl was a silicone cast.
While visiting the mental institution, TV News are heard about Hicham El Guerrouj's historic win over Nourreddine Morceli in the 1500 meters competition.
The policeman is named after a famous French painter, Pharaon de Winter, who was from the place the film is set.
Séverine Caneele and the cinema met one fine day in January 1998. By the greatest of coincidences. She was driving forklifts in a factory and director Bruno Dumont, who was looking for "a face" to play Domino, the heroine of his second film L'Humanité, spotted her "on file" in the files of a temporary employment agency in Hazebrouck, a small town in the heart of French Flanders. "At first I thought it was a joke," she recalls. The following summer, she won the Best Actress award in Cannes (shared with Emilie Duquesne in Rosetta).