The film was designed to celebrate the common ground between different cultures by tracing how children in various parts of the world mature into adulthood.
made history in late 1964 when it received a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle, which marked the first time that a non-theatrical commercial production was cited for an accolade.
)[5] However, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ruled that To Be Alive was ineligible for Oscar consideration because of its presentation on three separate screens.
To rectify this, the film's producers created a 70mm single-screen version that was shown in 1965 in Los Angeles, qualifying it for the Oscar.
[6] It won the Academy Award, beating out another sponsored short documentary: Point of View, produced by the National Tuberculosis Association.