The Films of Márta Mészáros
Tickets
Film at Lincoln Center announces The Films of Márta Mészáros, a retrospective of the feminist screenwriter and director’s filmography, January 21-26.
Tickets now on sale!
Márta Mészáros, a socialist and feminist filmmaker whose trailblazing, six-decade career broke barriers in cinema hierarchies, helped legitimize women’s artistic emancipation within the industry, alongside her contemporaries such as Agnès Varda and Věra Chytilová. Mészáros is perhaps best known for her Diary films from the 1980s and 1990s: a largely autobiographical trilogy based on the filmmaker’s life, with references to the tragic fates of her parents resulting from the Stalinist purges and her formative years as an orphan. Taken together, the films of Mészáros are masterful blends of the personal and the political, each one beautifully lensed, gently profound but never sentimental, and vividly attuned to the shifting social atmospheres of Hungary and its decades-long history of political unrest. This January, Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to present a selection of some of Mészáros’s most essential films, newly restored and on the big screen.
Presented in partnership with Janus Films. Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson.
The Girl
New 2K Restoration
One of the first Hungarian films directed by a woman, Márta Mészáros’s debut feature is an assured expression of many of her recurring themes: broken families, the relationships between parents and children, and the search for stability in an uncertain world.Binding Sentiments
New 2K Restoration
Family ties become a trap from which a woman struggles to escape in Mészáros’s quietly devastating sophomore feature.Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!
New 2K Restoration
One of Mészáros’s most formally experimental works due to its minimal dialogue and almost proto–music video style, Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls! reflects the cultural sea change sweeping Europe at a time when traditional values were being shaken by a youthquake of individual self-expression.Riddance
New 4K Restoration
A captivating critique of generational discord and class distinctions in ‘70s Hungary, Mészáros’s fourth feature conjures a sense of existential entrapment in a blossoming relationship.Adoption
New 4K Restoration
Mészáros brings her documentary background to bear on this masterful parable about female self-actualization in 1970s Hungary, the winner of the Golden Bear at the 1975 Berlinale.Nine Months
New 4K Restoration
A defiant woman asserts her autonomy in the face of a disapproving society in Mészáros’s complex look at the ways in which women’s bodies and minds are held in check by the strictures of patriarchy.The Two of Them
New 4K Restoration
Two women, each at a critical crossroads in life and love, find refuge in their friendship with one another in this multilayered look at female solidarity.The Heiresses
New 4K Restoration
The brilliance of a young Isabelle Huppert lends quiet intensity to this piercing period elegy set amidst the glimmering decadence of a pre-war Europe being consumed by the encroaching rot of Nazism.Diary for My Children
New 4K Restoration
Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Diary for My Children is a heartrending personal testimony from an artist revisiting the traumas of the past with a clear and critical eye.Diary for My Lovers
New 2K Restoration
Mészáros’s follow-up to Diary for My Children picks up the story of teenage Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), the director’s alter ego, as she defies the wishes of her Stalinist aunt (Anna Polony) and leaves Hungary in order to pursue her dream of becoming a filmmaker in Moscow.Diary for My Mother and Father
New 2K Restoration
The heartrending final installment of Mészáros’s autobiographical Diary trilogy continues to trace the journey of Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), a young orphan, through the tumult of postwar Hungary.Tickets are $15; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for Film at Lincoln Center members.
Save with the purchase of three tickets or more! 3+ Film Package tickets are just $9 for Film at Lincoln Center members, and $10 for students, seniors, and persons with disabilities, and $13 for the general public. Discount automatically applied when adding at least three tickets to your cart.