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Márta Mészáros’s Diary Trilogy

Diary for My Lovers

2h 12m

Directed by Márta Mészáros • 1987 • Hungary
Starring Czinkóczi Zsuzsa, Anna Polony, Jan Nowicki

Márta Mészáros’s follow-up to DIARY FOR MY CHILDREN picks up the story of teenage Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), the director’s alter ego, as she defies the wishes of her Stalinist aunt (Anna Polony) and leaves Hungary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a filmmaker in Moscow. There, Juli must navigate the bureaucratic propaganda machine that demands she conform to its ideas of “realism” while searching desperately for her missing father. Interweaving its heroine’s journey with the political upheavals of the postwar Eastern Bloc—from the death of Stalin to the short-lived promise of liberalization to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising—DIARY FOR MY LOVERS is a stirring depiction of a young woman finding her voice in a world intent on stifling it.

Up Next in Márta Mészáros’s Diary Trilogy

  • Diary for My Mother and Father
    1:56:38
    Diary for My Mother and Father

    Diary for My Mother and Father

    Directed by Márta Mészáros • 1990 • Hungary
    Starring Czinkóczi Zsuzsa, Mari Törőcsik, Jan Nowicki

    The heartrending third installment of Márta Mészáros’s autobiographical Diary series continues to trace the journey of Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), a young orphan, through the tumult of postwar Hungary....

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