Director Mathieu Vadepied met actor Omar Sy during the shoot of Quasi amici - Intouchables (2011), where he was the director of photography. Sy was attached to star in Io sono tuo padre (2022) for years during development, until he became too old to play the role of the son, and thought about just producing and not starring. He eventually took up the part of the father.
Because the main characters do not speak French, it was decided to have them speak Fula (or "peul" in French) with subtitles, instead of having them speak bad French with a heavy accent as it might have been done a few years earlier. Fula is an African language spoken in around 20 countries in Western and Central Africa, including Senegal where some of the action is set, and actor Omar Sy was already fluent in it.
The film was shot in France from August 23, 2021 to October 13, 2021, before moving on to Senegal in January 2022. It was partially shot in Neufmaison, Ardennes.
Director Mathieu Vadepied was moved in 1998 by the death of the last Senegalese Tirailleur, Abdoulaye Ndiaye, at the age of 104, and had the idea that the remains of the unknown soldier in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris may be from a soldier from the French Colonial Empire in Africa, and it stayed with him. Writing the screenplay took six years with Olivier Demangel, where they restarted from scratch (new story, new characters) several times.
It was revealed the day of the movie release that several extras from Mali and the Ivory Coast used during the shoot in the Ardennes were illegal alien and had to leave France, even though they were well integrated into French society.