Márta Mészáros

Director

“A person cannot be freed of their roots.”

Biography

Márta Mészáros (born September 19, 1931 in Kispest, Hungary) is a Hungarian film director. She worked as an English Teachersmeaning? filmmaker in the 1960s, but in the following decade began making films drawing on the oppression of both state and gender. In the 1980s, she created the autobiographical Diary series of films.

She married Miklós Jancsó in 1960; though they later divorced, their two sons, Nyika Jancsó and Miklós Jancsó Jr., have separately worked as director of photography on many of her films. In 1978 she directed the film Just Like Home, which starred Anna Karina.

She later became romantically involved with the Polish actor Jan Nowicki. After having lived together for many years, they split up in 2008. Nowicki starred in many of her films, including the principal role in The Unburied Dead. His son from an earlier relationship, Łukasz Nowicki, starred in Mészáros’ Kisvilma. Mészáros became widely known in Poland and has directed some cinema and TV productions… read more