Napló - Diary For My Children

István Szábo, Márta Mészáros, Zoltán Fábri and Míklos Jancsó: four distinctive filmmakers who made their mark under the communist regime in Hungary. Their films were screened at international festivals, received major awards (including an Oscar for Szábo’s Mephisto) and were praised for their artistic qualities as well as their critical stance towards the communist regime.

Márta Mészáros (1931) made three films based on her recollections of life in communist Hungary (1949-1989), a country whose regime was initially inspired by Stalinist ideology. Napló – Diary For My Children, the first part of the trilogy, is set in the years before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The secret police kept tabs on dissidents, and anyone expressing doubts about the blessings of the workers’ paradise risked being arrested.

tensions at home

In a mix of drama and documentary, Mészáros shows the clash between Juli and her adoptive mother Magda. Magda rises fast through the Party ranks, Juli is the daughter of Hungarian communists murdered by Stalin. To evade the tensions at home, Juli absconds from school and spends her days in the cinema.

Mészáros shot the film in black and white, with the restricted colour palette contributing to the film’s oppressive and suffocating atmosphere. Napló – Diary for My Children grew into a highly personal film about a regime that put the ideal of the ‘collective man’ as based on the works of Marx and Lenin above the individual needs of the Hungarian people.