Trivia / State of Siege

• California Doubling: For obvious reasons, the movie was not shot in Uruguay, but instead shot in Chile.
• Fake American: The Italian/French actor Yves Montand as the American Philip Michael Santore (plus, he mostly speaks French).
• Fake Nationality: Most of the Latin American characters are played by French actors, with a few German and Italian actors as well.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Yves Montand in real life had been a Communist, though he had distanced himself from the Communist Party after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, and would later turn right-wing.
• Production Posse: Montand and Renato Salvatori (who plays the police chief) both appeared in Z.
  • Mikis Theodorakis also wrote the music for Z.
• Referenced by...: In The Dancer Upstairs, Detective Rejas discovers a tape of the movie at a suspect's house.
  • Steven Soderbergh has acknowledged The Oner shot in Traffic (2000), following two different cars going in two different direction at the U.S./Mexico border, was taken from an early sequence in State of Siege.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Costa-Gavras originally wanted to make a movie about a U.S. ambassador to Greece during the coup.
  • Raoul Coutard, who had shot Z, was offered the chance to be cinematographer on this film, but he was busy directing his own movie.

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