Few filmmakers have achieved the depiction ofpersonal needs and relationships within a finely observed political context asMarta Mészáros did with her debut feature. In Girl a lonely youngworking-class woman who has grown up in an orphanage seeks her real mother, onlyto find herself being passed off as a niece. Told in intuitive vignettes, thestory has autobiographical elements that would appear in other of the director'sfilms. Mészáros, born in 1931, grew up an orphan and a perpetualforeigner after her parents (the sculptor LászlóMészáros and his wife), who had emigrated to the Soviet Union,perished in Stalin's concentration camps. In her films she often depicts aprofound restlessness and a search for personal truth among not one but twogenerations of women, and examines the stratifications within Hungarian societythat leave youth of both sexes alienated.