Márta Mészáros

Who is Márta Mészáros?

Márta Mészáros is a Hungarian screenwriter and film director. Daughter of László Mészáros, a sculptor, Mészáros began her career working in documentary film and made 25 documentary shorts over the span of ten years, before making her first feature film Eltavozott nap, which was released in 1968. The first feature film directed by a woman in the history of Hungarian cinema and the winner of the Special Prize of the Jury of the International Film Festival in Valladolid.

Her films often combine autobiographical details with documentary footage and deal with the denial of a biographical past, lying and its consequences, and the problematics of gender. Mészáros heroines are often from fragmented families: young girls seeking their missing parents or middle aged single women hoping to adopt a child.

Although Mészáros has made over fifteen feature films she is probably best known for her film Diary for My Children, which won the Grand-Prix Award at the Cannes Film Festival and is the first film in a trilogy of autobiographical films that also includes Diary for my Lovers, and Diary for my Father and Mother.