William Karel had just completed "Hollywood", a film based on lying, when he and the documentary unit of Arte had the idea of making a mockumentary, to play with the serious tonality of Arte but also for pleasure, and to make a funny film based on the idea that one must not believe everything that one is told, that witnesses can lie, archives can be tricked, and that any subject can be twisted by misleading subtitling or dubbing. They looked for a topic that would be universal and historical but not sensitive like a war. Hence the choice of the Moon landing, which had for more than 30 years been a topic of debate regarding the reality of these images. They found it was a fairly funny topic.