The film is comprised of long takes. One of them lasts an astounding 8 minutes.
The film is notable for having virtually no dialogue.
At one point, filming ground to a halt for a year and a half due to budgetary problems.
The title (which translates into English as The Four Times) refers to something that Pythagoras supposedly said. His implication was that each of us has four lives that are all inextricably linked: man, animal, plant and mineral. This is reflected in the narrative progression of the film which starts off focusing on the elderly goatherder, then his goats, then a tree which is finally turned into charcoal which is then sold back to the humans of the village.
Filmed in the tiny Calabrian town of Caulonia. Director Michelangelo Frammartino is the first of his family not to be born there.