Genre: Drama

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

The first Hungarian film directed by a woman, Márta Mészáros’ debut feature is an assured expression of many of her recurring themes: broken families, the relationships between parents and children, and the search for stability in an uncertain world.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

In representing Hungarian society’s clashing attitudes and prejudices Mészáros depicts a working class woman’s attempt to overcome the perceived inferiority of her social status as well as her own familial dysfunction and feelings of inadequacy.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

Mészáros gives aching expression to the experiences of women in 1970s Hungary in this sensitive and absorbing slice-of-life drama, which became the first film directed by a woman to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

A defiant woman asserts her autonomy in the face of a disapproving society in Mészáros’ complex look at the ways in which women’s bodies and minds are held in check by the strictures of patriarchy.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

Two women, each at a critical crossroads in life and love, find refuge in their friendship with one another in this multilayered look at female solidarity. With characteristic sensitivity, Mészáros traces the protective yet complex bond that forms between the two, each at a different stage of life.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

Unable to give birth, Szilvia, a wealthy heiress, offers Irén money in exchange for conceiving a child with her husband on her behalf. A piercing period elegy blurring social boundaries and leading all involved into an explosive moral, emotional, and romantic minefield.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

Mészáros drew on her own wartime experiences to craft this haunting portrait of a young woman coming of age amidst a turbulent historical moment, caught between the shock of World War II and the rising tide of Stalinism. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

Mészáros’ follow-up to Diary for My Children picks up the story of teenage Juli, the director’s alter-ego, as she defies the wishes of her Stalinist aunt and leaves Hungary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a filmmaker in Moscow. A stirring depiction of a young woman finding her voice in a world intent on stifling it.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.

Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian

The heartrending final installment of Mészáros’ autobiographical Diary trilogy. An epic and intimate portrait of history as she experienced it, bearing witness to both the horrors of totalitarian oppression and the courage of those who resist.

Presented at the Film Center as part of a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen.