Márta Mészáros

Anna tries to give her children everything,
although her husband’s lack of employment and their indebtedness are becoming increasingly oppressive.
When it transpires that she is pregnant again, she is faced with a tremendously difficult decision.
On the other hand, Teréz has everything in life except what she most yearns for: a baby.
The wealthy woman offers to resolve all Anna’s financial troubles,
if she will go through with the birth and then hand over the child.
Márta Mészáros’s emotional drama positions the spotlight on surrogacy and the moral dilemmas that surround the subject.Read More »

From the DVD booklet:
Our town… is big! Maybe that’s why it has room for so many stories and events, for so many problems. Probably you’d like us to tell you a story, maybe even a love story. No. Today we’ll talk about a problem. In fact, it’s still a problem of the heart…but a problem to do with children. This is the start of a film made by Márta Mészáros during the few years she spent in Romania at the Sahia studio. The warmth of the beginning is unexpected for a film produced during one of Romania’s darkest decades. The film’s protagonists are orphans taken into care by the state and accommodated at a children’s home in Bucharest. Mészáros’s interest in the fate of children orphaned in the aftermath of the Second World War was autobiographic: as she had lost her parents as a child herself, she had first-hand experience of growing up without them.Read More »

Like ADOPTION, this 1964 short film by Márta Mészáros explores the themes of broken family bonds; it also offers insight into the origins of the director’s career.

A day in the solitary life of Pista, a single child of divorced parents. The boy skips school and explores the city of Budapest by himself, yet can’t escape an unbearable ennui. Like Mészáros’s ADOPTION, this early short film explores the themes of broken family bonds; it also offers insight into the origins of the director’s career.Read More »

Returning from America, Andras tries to renew his relationship with Anna, an old flame, but she refuses. His decision to buy a dog for companionship leads to a meeting with a little girl and a new relationship begins.Read More »

Barbara is a young mother of two in Hungary whose everyday life is abruptly collapses when a friend in Poland dies. Barbara travels to the funeral and meets an actress and experiences an intense love story.Read More »

After her husband dies, a woman questions her love for her husband and whether or not to accept money from the insurance policy. Tensions mount when her estranged son returns to the familial home with his girlfriend.Read More »

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1936. Sylvia a rich but sterile woman, marries Akos but needs an heir to inherit her father’s money. She bribes Irene a Jewish girl to have a child by her husband.Read More »

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Fourteen year old Juli returns with her adopted grandfather and grandmother to Budapest in 1947 having spent the war in Moscow, as communists escaping the Nazi regime. They return to find the country in an effective puppet dictatorship and under extreme Stalinist rule. They are billeted with Magda, a self-styled ‘aunt’ who is also a high ranking official in the state police, though was once a radical revolutionary. Juli immediately distrusts her and rebels at every opportunity, but she befriends Janos, another old time radical who has escaped before and who is always under threat of arrest.Read More »

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Single factory worker Kata, 43, wants to have a child with her long-time secret lover, a married man called Joska. He doesn’t like the idea. Kata befriends teenage schoolgirl Anna, abandoned by her parents at the age of six. Anna runs away from the local children’s home and moves in with Kata so that she can keep on seeing her boyfriend Sanyi. Kata goes to see Anna’s parents and persuades them to give the young lovers their permission to marry. Through Anna, Kata becomes interested in neglected children and decides to adopt a baby from the children’s home.Read More »