The year of the trial is supposed to be around 1973 (date of Sigrid Radke's coerced confession), but the film was shot in contemporary Germany. In a street scene, Gunther X (Sean Penn) walks by a Berlin electronic shop advertising compact disk players (introduced in the early 1980's). Also, Judge Stern refers to the Nurenburg Trials as having occurred "45 years ago", which would refer to the present as around 1990.