The Films of Márta Mészáros

June 3–July 20, 2022

“Since my first film I have attempted in a very deliberate and stubborn way to portray women capable of making independent decisions,” wrote acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros, who at age ninety is the subject of this major retrospective featuring new digital restorations of her films. 

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  • The Girl

  • The Heiresses

  • Riddance

  • Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!

  • Diary for My Lovers

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Girl

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1968
    Friday, June 3 7 PM

    Forget James Dean; Mészáros’s debut introduces viewers to a young female rebel without a cause, a textile factory worker searching for her past and for pleasure in her present. 

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  • Binding Sentiments

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1969
    Sunday, June 5 7 PM

    A recently widowed woman finds herself held hostage by her son and his girlfriend in this icy, Bergman-esque portrait of the maternal ties that turn to chains. 

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  • Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1970
    Friday, June 10 7 PM

    Iron Curtain industrial realism merges with A Hard Day’s Night fancy in this weightless caper through the Hungarian “New Beat” underground, as downtrodden factory kids escape in rock and roll. 

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  • Riddance

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1973
    Wednesday, June 15 7 PM

    A lower-class textile mill girl falls for a bourgeoise student in Mészáros’s biting examination of unequal social constructs—and the final freedom of smashing plates. 

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  • Adoption

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1975
    Saturday, June 18 7 PM

    Mészáros brought her documentary background to bear in this masterful parable about female self-actualization in 1970s Hungary, the winner of the Golden Bear at the 1975 Berlin Film Festival.

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  • Nine Months

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1976
    Friday, June 24 7 PM

    A newly arrived factory worker and her foreman strike up a doomed relationship in Mészáros’s look at love—or the impossibility thereof—in a society with little room for affection. 

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  • The Two of Them

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1977
    Wednesday, June 29 7 PM

    French star Marina Vlady (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) provides the calm to Lili Monori’s rage in this astonishing look at two women at different stages of their lives. 

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  • The Heiresses

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, France, 1980
    Wednesday, July 6 7 PM

    In 1936 Budapest, with Nazism on the rise, the wealthy but sterile wife of a military officer asks her young Jewish friend (Isabelle Huppert) to bear her husband’s child. 

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  • Diary for My Children

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1984
    Saturday, July 9 7 PM

    Mészáros folds national history, a coming-of-age tale, and the power of cinephilia into this look at a young orphan seeking truth amidst the lies, conspiracies, and shadows of postwar Hungary.

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  • Diary for My Lovers

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1987
    Friday, July 15 7 PM

    Mészáros’s second Diary installment follows teenage Juli, the director’s alter ego, as she leaves Hungary to become a filmmaker in Moscow and discovers that her vision of “reality” is different than Russia’s.

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  • Diary for My Father and Mother

    Márta Mészáros
    Hungary, 1990
    Wednesday, July 20 7 PM

    The heartrending final installment of Mészáros’s semi-autobiographical Diary trilogy continues the journey of Juli, a young orphan, through the tumult of postwar Hungary.

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