Trivia

In the 1960s, writer Jerzy Kosinski had become famous in Manhattan literary circles for his astonishing tales about the brutalities he had allegedly suffered during the Second World War. Abandoned by his parents at the age of six, he claimed he had roamed the countryside alone, witnessing rape, murder, and incest, constantly fearing for his life. Kosinski turned those stories into his first novel, "The Painted Bird", which, for a time, was considered a major work of Holocaust literature. Kosinski's claims were later debunked when it was revealed that he and his parents had all been sheltered by religious Poles who had never handed him over to the Nazis.

It took director Václav Marhoul ten years to get the movie financed. Stellan Skarsgård, who knew the original novel on which the film was based and who had met with Marhoul before, sympathized with the project and was the first actor to sign on. Realizing the financial difficulties Marhoul had in funding the film, Skarsgård only asked for a fee of EUR100 ($120) for his participation. Marhoul said that he gave Skarsgård a big hug after the shoot.

The title comes from a story in the book. A bird-catcher catches a bird then paints it multiple colors. Upon returning to flight, he's an outcast to the other birds.

While the source original novel is set in Poland, director Václav Marhoul didn't want to associate the film with a specific country. He called the villagers' fictional language, created from several Eastern European languages, 'Interslavic' or 'Slavic Esperanto.'

Petr Kotlár, who had no prior acting experience, was cast as the main character when director Václav Marhoul accidentally bumped into him. To find out if Kotlár could mentally handle the horrors in the movie (which was spread out over two years of filming), Marhoul had him psychologically tested prior to the shoot. He passed the test.