The film was an Italian-led production with co-producers in France and the United Kingdom. It was Garrone’s first English-language film. It competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

The Baroque stories manage to mix real and surreal with many metaphorical usages. Pentamerone was the first book of fairytales, written in the 1600s that has inspired many authors including the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault.

The three tales are La Cerva Fatata (The Enchanted Doe), La Pulce (The Flea), La Vecchia Scorticata (The Flayed Old Lady), that have been freely adapted with elements of other tales by Giambattista Basile, as well as a touch of artistic license