Filmed on location in the area where Dr. Francisco Jiménez and his family lived and worked in the 1950s. Some scenes were shot in the specific locations where the real events took place.
Julia Arteaga (Mamá) is from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, near the town of Tlaquepaque, the birthplace of Dr. Francisco Jiménez. When she auditioned for the film she wore a dress she had bought in Tlaquepaque.
The strawberry field scene was filmed in a field where the Jiménez family actually worked as pickers in the 1950s and 1960s. It is still an active strawberry field and is now owned and operated by a Mexican-American family of growers that started out as migrant farmworkers decades ago.
Malakai Jiménez Wilkins, the child actor who portrays Panchito as a four-year-old, is the great-nephew of the real Francisco Jiménez.
Like Roberto, the character he plays, Edgar de Santiago is the oldest of six siblings.