Hungarian director Nóra Lakos’s I Accidentally Wrote a Book achieved remarkable success over the weekend, winning seven awards across three countries, the National Film Institute (NFI) announced on Monday.
At the 30th Schlingel Film Festival in Chemnitz, Germany, the film received the Club of Festivals Award for Best Youth Film, decided by representatives from 36 international festivals. It also earned the MDR television distribution prize and the jury award from a panel of young viewers.
The Schlingel professional jury praised the film’s humorous yet sensitive approach to serious themes that children encounter in everyday life. They highlighted the director’s innovative use of writing as a metaphor to convey thoughtful messages about life.
Meanwhile, at Frankfurt’s 48th Lucas Youth Film Festival and Poland’s Tauron Young Horizons Film Festival, Lakos’s film took home the main competition awards for Best Feature Film, as well as the European Children’s Film Association (ECFA) Award. This recognition makes the film eligible for the European Children’s Film of the Year Award, to be decided in February by 150 film professionals.
According to the Tauron jury, the film tells a story in which everyone has the chance to start anew, tackling a serious topic with humour and imagination. The Lucas jury described it as ‘a warm, captivating story told with great attention to detail—a story only Nina could tell, because it is truly her own.’
Simultaneously, I Accidentally Wrote a Book opened the Buster Film Festival in Copenhagen, where it was screened across 13 cities in Denmark as a featured production.
Over the past year, the film has won 23 awards at major international festivals, including Tallinn’s A-category Black Nights Film Festival. It has also been recognized in Canada, South Korea, and Chile, among others.
Co-produced by JUNO11 and the Human Rights and Cultural Foundation, the film has become Hungary’s most successful live-action family movie since the regime change, drawing more than 160,000 viewers.
Written and directed by Nóra Lakos, the film was produced by Claudia Sümeghy, Tamás Yvan Topolánszky, and Lakos herself, with Dutch co-producers Maaike Neve and Joram Willink. The production was supported by the National Film Institute, the Netherlands Film Fund, and Eurimages.
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