When the financing with American producers failed, the Austrian producer Josef Aichholzer, the Austrian producer of „The Counterfeiters“, entered the project as coproducer. The film was supported by HessenInvestFilm, the Austrian Film Institute, the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) and the Austrian Film and Television Fund (ORF) in coproduction with the German broadcaster ZDF.
Principal photography took place on a former military compound of the US Army in Hanau, in Frankfurt am Main, Bremen, Paris and eastern USA.
In September 2012 Stefan Ruzowitzky and DOP Benedict Neuenfels took their team to the Ukraine for the beginning of principal photography, following the path of Père Patrick Desbois to the scenes of mass executions of Jews in and around the town of Bibrka.
Photography took place there in late summer, which was when the massacres happened.
