 According to DEFA historian Dagmar Schittly, "On the Sunny Side" was the most popular East German film of the early 1960, and was very successful with the audience.Director Ralf Kirsten, Krug, writers Heinz Kahlau and Gisela Steineckert and cinematographer Hans Heinrich were awarded the Heinrich Greif Prize 1st class in collective for their work on the picture at March 1962.Steineckert also received the Art Prize of the Free German Trade Union Federation.