A young woman leaves a state orphanage to find her mother in this interesting examination of
how the overt repression of women in the older pattern of village life has been replaced by
the more subtle sexual and economic exploitation inherent in the apparently freer existence
of young girls in the contemporary city. A key film from Marta Meszaros. Read More »

A story of a mother who had to change her profession from a teacher to a high class prostitute to make a living. Read More »

Wikipedia wrote:
Diary for My Lovers (Hungarian: Napló szerelmeimnek) is a 1987 Hungarian drama film directed by Márta Mészáros. It was entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement. Read More »

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators. Read More »

Quote:
The film zeroes in on two women: Kata, older and widowed, and Anna, a downtrodden young women kept in a children’s institution by her unloving parents. Her own sense of self-value strengthened by an unhappy love affair (she realizes that all fault lay with the man), Kata helps free Anna from her family’s influence. Anna gets married, while Kata adopts a child from the institution where Anna had previously dwelled. A winner of several film awards in its country of origin, The Adoption was directed by Marta Meszaros, the wife of renowned Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso. — Hal Erickson Read More »

Short Synopsis:

Jutka, a young woman who works in a factory, falls in love with Andras, a university student. She pretends to be a student, to him and to his parents, and begins to live a lie. Finally she rebels against Andras and his demands and the social conventions that forced her to live a lie.

NY Times Review, 1976 wrote:
There may no longer be easily recognizable social classes in Communist Hungary, but there remain class distinctions that can be as malignant as any under the old order.

“Riddance,” the 1973 Hungarian film directed by Marta Meszaros, is the rueful account of the love affair of a pretty, spirited young woman who works in a textile factory and a young university student whose parents are grossly more equal than other people. Having just emerged from the working class, his mother and father guard their bourgeois status not tenaciously, but primly, as if it were their bookcase full of fragile, unspeakably awful knickknacks. Read More »