Diary for My Lovers

The second installment of Mészáros’s acclaimed Diary series is arguably its most searing—and timely—exposing how history and reality can be erased through political manipulation. Now in film school in Moscow, Juli finds that her newsreels expose too much discontent for her censors. “You must create a new reality,” they remind her, one where contentment is the only norm. Intertwining Juli’s personal artistic awakening and her mentor Janos’s continuing activism with the history of Hungary—from the death of Stalin to the beginning of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising—this second Diary showcases how history affects the individual, as well as how an individual may affect history.