The film is based on a 1956 poem by Swedish writer Harry Martinson. The epic, book-length poem has 103 cantos.
The main character, Mimaroben, has only a job title for a name. In this case, "mima," the machine's name means "mime" or "pantomime," and "roben" means to dress. Essentially, she is the mima-dresser.
The word "Aniara" was poet Harry Martinson's invention. He supposedly came up with it to mean the "name for the space in which the atoms move" while reading astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada in September 2018.