[3] The East German transgender activist Charlotte von Mahlsdorf played a cameo role as a barmaid.

He demonstrates empathy with a discriminated minority by defending a black man who is being bullied on a train.

Philipp is eventually forced to come out to Tanja, after she inadvertently meets Mathias during intermission at a concert by the famous conductor Daniel Barenboim that all three are attending.

The old man Philipp first met in the bar is there again and he tells him the story of how he was forced to separate from his lover during the Nazi period.

The opening scene follows an ambulance through well-known areas and boroughs such as Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin-Mitte (Alexander Platz) and Friedrichshain on a night that the audience could assume is New Year's Eve, due to the fireworks in the background.

Other scenes in the movie are filmed on locations that were common meeting points for homosexuals in East Germany such as the Fairytale Fountain (Märchenbrunnen) in Volkspark Friedrichshain and bars such as Schoppenstube in Prenzlauer Berg and Zum Burgfrieden which was located at Wichertstraße 69, though it was closed in January 2000.

[3] The family of Lothar Bisky allowed scenes which took place in Tanja's apartment to be filmed in their Berlin home.

Bisky was the director of the University of Film and Television (Potsdam-Babelsberg) from 1986 to 1990 and later, in the reunified Germany, he became a left wing politician.