Diary for My Children (1984)
Director: Márta Mészáros Run Time: 106 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1984
Starring: Anna Polony, Czinkóczi Zsuzsa, Jan Nowicki, Sándor Oszter, Teri Földi
Country: Hungary
Language: Hungarian
Presented at the Film Center as part of The Films of Márta Mészáros, a highlighted retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, newly restored and on the big screen, from June 10—15, 2022.
About the film:
One of Hungary’s most acclaimed filmmakers, Márta Mészáros, drew on her own wartime experiences to craft this haunting portrait of a young woman coming of age amidst a turbulent historical moment. After losing her father in the Stalinist purges, strong-willed teenager Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi) is brought back to Hungary to live with Magda (Anna Polony), a rigid Communist Party official who embodies the icy intellectual repression that has begun to take hold in the country. As she navigates an unfamiliar new world—one caught between the shock of World War II and the rising tide of Stalinism—Juli must fight to retain her sense of self.
Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Diary for My Children is a heartrending personal testimony from an artist revisiting the traumas of the past with a clear and critical eye.
About the filmmaker:
Márta Mészáros is a socialist and feminist filmmaker whose trailblazing, six-decade career broke barriers in cinema hierarchies, helped legitimize women’s artistic emancipation within the industry, alongside her contemporaries such as Agnès Varda and Věra Chytilová. Read more.
Gateway Film Center is pleased to present a selection of Mészáros’s most essential films.
The Films of Márta Mészáros See our upcoming films