Lead actor Benjamin Biolay is best known as a singer. Playing a music critic here, the film includes a scene where his character hears one of his real life songs on the radio and thinks it sucks.
In order to prepare for her role, Camille Cottin met several volunteers working with refugees, as well as immigration lawyers.
Feature film directing and writing debut for Julie Navarro, after a long career in casting and as an assistant director. She had previously written and directed a short film.
Finding the actor for Daoud's role was not easy; the casting crew combed every association working with refugees for a year and a half. One of the non-negotiable conditions was that the refugee actor had to have French legal papers. They eventually found Amrullah Safi only six weeks before shooting. As he didn't speak any French, he couldn't have read the script, so he worked in a kind of guided improv the whole time, to which the cast and crew had to adapt.
Adapted from the 2015 novel by Marc Salbert "De l'Influence du lancer de minibar sur l'engagement humanitaire", which can be translated to English as "Of the influence of the minibar throw on humanitarian engagement", a seemingly weird title, which makes sense very early in the movie.
Director Julie Navarro, Salbert's wife, really liked the book, and invited some producers at one of his signings, and they called her back a month later to suggest turning it into a movie. She immediately offered to direct it, which they agreed to, but to feel confortable with this new role, she first wrote and directed a short movie, Cléo (2017).