Diary for My Mother and Father (1990)
Director: Márta Mészáros Run Time: 119 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1990
Starring: Anna Polony, Czinkóczi Zsuzsa, Ildikó Bánsági, Jan Nowicki, Mari Törőcsik
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:
The heartrending final installment of Márta Mészáros’ autobiographical Diary trilogy continues to trace the journey of Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), a young orphan, through the tumult of postwar Hungary. Set in the wake of the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution, Diary for My Mother and Father follows Juli as she leaves film school in Moscow and returns home to Budapest where she discovers a shattered world, one where brutality, fear, and anxiety permeate every aspect of life as Soviet forces tighten their grip on power.
Seamlessly interweaving documentary newsreel footage with stirring human drama, Mészáros creates an at once 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.
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