The scene in which the main characters talk at Jong-su's house was filmed over a month. They were only able to shoot for a few minutes every day to capture consistent twilight on camera.
The film is based on the short story "Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami. Japanese broadcaster NHK, which owns the rights to Murakami work, asked Lee Chang-dong to choose and adapt into a film one of short stories by Murakami.
This film was also inspired by William Faulkner's 1939 story "Barn Burning". Lee described the film as "the story of a young Faulkner living in the Murakami world."
Paju, the hometown of Jong-su, is famous for its fog. According to cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, there were many foggy scenes at dawn, but some were deleted because they came out so beautifully. Many of the scenes where Jong-su runs to search greenhouses at dawn were also deleted because the foggy landscapes were too beautifully shown.
The loudspeaker broadcast that Jong-su hears at home is actually the sound that can be heard in Paju, which is near the DMZ and the filming location. However, it was difficult to record the actual broadcast, so the sound recorded by a North Korean defector was inserted into the film. The broadcast rang out in Paju during the filming, but it was turned off after the inter-Korean summit in April 2018.