Very few foreign-language films receive nominations in the major Oscar categories. So Lasse Hallström's double here (for his direction and the co-written adapted screenplay) represents a notable achievement. Although the bulk of the story is based on Reidar Jonsson's popular novel, Hallström also invests this delightful rite-of-passage picture with many autobiographical references to achieve a work of Truffautesque warmth and wit. Hallström shows a keen appreciation of the workings of a young mind, as he chronicles the misadventures of an imaginative 12-year-old packed off by his tubercular mother to stay with his uncle in the southern Swedish countryside of the 1950s. Thus, he is able to coax a performance of innocence and spirit from Anton Glanzelius, who is wonderfully natural whether getting into mischief, experiencing misery or taking on the unsuspecting locals who cross his path.

A boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.