Márta Mészáros’s Diary Trilogy

With her extraordinary Diary Trilogy, trailblazing Hungarian auteur Márta Mészáros fused the personal and the political, entwining her country’s turbulent post–World War II history with a heartrending story drawn from her own life experiences. Tracing the journey of a strong-willed orphan named Juli as she navigates the terror of rising Soviet repression while attempting to assert her creative voice as a filmmaker, these films—DIARY FOR MY CHILDREN, DIARY FOR MY LOVERS, and DIARY FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER—sketch an at once epic and intimate portrait of history as Mészáros experienced it, bearing witness to both the horrors of totalitarianism and the courage of those who resist.