 The movie was a passion project for Dreyfuss who had wanted to make it since he was a teenager.He was an admirer of "The Life of Emile Zola" and "I Accuse".He was unable to get the studios interested - "When you go to a studio, what they need for their agenda that year usually is not a film about the French Army in 1894," he said - but succeeded in setting up the film at HBO.