Géza Morcsányi had never acted before and is in fact the director of the biggest literary publishing house in Hungary.
The two protagonists always address each other using the more formal second person of the Hungarian language. By the year the story takes place, this form of speech has already become fairly uncommon between colleagues; it can signal both respect and distance.
The film was partly shot in a real abattoir with real animals - a message at the end of the credits reads: "During the shooting of our film animals were harmed, but none of them for the sake of this film. We just documented the daily routine of a slaughterhouse."