Sin respiro (1997) was nominated for two awards at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, winning a "Special Recognition" for production designer Thérèse DePrez. Rose McGowan, who attended Sundance to promote the film, has alleged that Harvey Weinstein raped her while at the festival that year.
Ben Affleck's character of "Gunner" was inspired by the life of Ted Steeg, who also appears in the movie as the Minister. Dan Wakefield, the film's screenwriter (and author of the adapted novel) also appears briefly in the film (as Farmer #2). Wakefield and Steeg were friends in Indiana, who later roomed together in New York City's Greenwich Village. Wakefield chronicles this halcyon period in his book, "New York in the Fifties," which was also made into a documentary in 2001.
Eighteen years earlier, Jill Clayburgh had co-starred in another movie, which like this one, was also based on a novel by Dan Wakefield, Comenzar de nuevo (1979).
In a 2022 interview with The Playlist, Mark Pellington spoke about a favorite scene that was restored in his director's cut, released in 2022: "This [edit] has so much more material where they're at their best. There's 55 minutes of new footage, which is pure great performance from both (Ben Affleck and Jeremy Davies). That stuff at the campfire in the quarry is my favorite. The simplicity of it, too. One camera, usually only two takes - maybe sometimes one. It was all I had time for, so I had to rely on them to be really good. It's almost like they were just being Gunner and Sonny. If you made a sequel to it right after, they'd be so self-aware of who they are. They're not conscious that they're acting. They're some extensions of themselves saying these words."
Sin respiro (1997) was written by Dan Wakefield, based on his 1970 novel of the same name. The film was shot on location in Indianapolis, Indiana, the setting of Wakefield's autobiographical novel.