[1] Based upon a true story, the short 15-minute film relates the execution of a French woman who is condemned to death for killing her two children.

[2] Elfelt used a typical stationary, one-shot camera position, but directed the actors to gesture and enter and exit with reference to things happening outside of the audience's view.

[3] According to later descriptions, the film showed a murderess seated inside a prison cell, then being ushered to her place of execution.

In the existing footage, the woman (Francesca Nathansen) is led through a door and up a sunlit gangway by a priest and a prison guard.

[4] According to the actress Nathansen, only a few days after filming, Henrettelsen premiered with great success at the Panoptikonbygningen [da] in Copenhagen.