Critics took notice of the film (it won the 1961 Czechoslovak Film Critics’ Award together with the Czech film People Live Here Too [Všude žijí lidé; dir. Jiří Hanibal and Stěpán Skalský, 1960) because of its intimate storytelling—six stories loosely connected by child-heroes—and its premise that children’s distorted reality can be more truthful than a so-called objective reconstruction of history. Critics also noted that the film was not without hope, despite its tragic ending.