The film was rejected by both the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. It ended up having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2023.
Director Ira Sachs and distributor MUBI rejected the NC-17 rating the movie received and released it in theaters unrated in August 2023. Sachs called the rating "a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling, in such extreme ways, the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist."
Ira Sachs began writing this film for Franz Rogowski after seeing him in Michael Haneke's Happy End, specifically the scene where Franz performs a karaoke performance of Sia's 'Chandelier'.
In the opening scene, the clapboard for Tomas's movie, also called "Passages", reveals his full name as Tomas Freiburg. Franz Rogowski was actually born in Freiburg, Germany.