Trivia for Pain and Glory

• Julieta Serrano's first collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar in almost thirty years. They had previously worked together on many of his 1980s films: Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980), Dark Habits (1983), Matador (1986), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) and, most famously, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).
• Pedro Almodóvar's eighth collaboration with Antonio Banderas and his sixth with Penélope Cruz. Pain and Glory (2019) marks his second collaboration with both of them together, the first being I'm So Excited! (2013).
• Inspired by 8½ (1963).
• Julieta Serrano and Antonio Banderas already played mother and son, more than 30 years before, in another two movies by Pedro Almodóvar: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Matador (1986)
• In this self-referential movie encapsulating the early and later life of its director, "deporting Salvador Mallo" is an anagram of "stalling Pedro Almodóvar".
• Has been selected as the Spanish entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
• Film debut of Latin Grammy winner Rosalía. She plays one of Penélope Cruz's friends during the river scene, where she also sings.
• As usual, Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro's brother and producer of the movie, makes a cameo. In this case, as a teacher and priest in a flashback, when Antonio Banderas' character is a small boy.
• Film debut of César Vicente.

Spoilers

• In an October 2019 New York Times profile, Pedro Almodóvar clarified that although many aspects of this movie and of the character Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) are drawn from Almodóvar's own life--including the debilitating pain that Mallo experiences--Almodóvar had to assure his friends, family, and colleagues that he has never actually turned to using heroin to self-medicate for that pain (as Mallo does in the movie).