About

Orphaned by the death of her mother and disappearance of her father during the Stalinist purges, rebellious teenager Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi) is escorted from Moscow back to her native Budapest. Upon her arrival, she is taken to live with her aunt Magda (Anna Polony), a high-ranking and strict Communist Party bureaucrat. Before long, Juli’s strong-willed and independent nature comes into conflict with Magda’s rigid ideology, prompting Juli to seek refuge with Magda’s kindly former-lover János (Jan Norwicki) and his son András (Támas Toth). Haunted by the rising spectre of Stalinism and frustrated by the stifling suppression of curiosity intellectual surrounding her, Juli finds solace at the local cinema, which ignites a profound creative passion that will steer the young filmmaker-to-be through the turbulent years ahead.

Set between 1947 and 1950, the first instalment of Mészáros’s acclaimed semi-autobiographical 'Diary' trilogy, Diary for My Children is a poetic and deeply personal portrait of the filmmaker’s formative early years in her native Hungary under Soviet occupation. A testimony to the timeless power of creative free expression in the face of suppressive forces, the film won the Grand Prix at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival while also being banned by State censors in Hungary, helping to further confirm Mészáros’s place among the preeminent filmmakers of the post-war generation.

Ages 15+