[5] Born in Budapest, Mészáros spent eleven years of her childhood in the Soviet Union, where her parents had emigrated as communist artists in 1936.

[8] In the 1980s Mészáros made her semi-autobiographical “Diary films” that had a major impact on “Hungarian cinema” because of her conscious depiction of the government and individual past experiences.

In terms of content, Mészáros' films explore the wide and often tragic gaps between ideals and realities, and between parents and their children.

Mészáros' films deal with realities usually ignored in Eastern European cinema: the subordination of women, conflicts of urban and rural cultures, antagonism between the bureaucracy and its employees, alcoholism, the generation gap, dissolution of traditional family structures, and the plight of state-reared children.

Mészáros is one of few female filmmakers who consistently makes films that are both critically and commercially successful for an international audience.

Her eight feature films, made from 1968 to 1979, are concerned with the social oppression, economic constraints, and emotional challenges faced by Hungarian women.

In her own words, Mészáros explains: "I tell banal, commonplace stories, and then in them the leads are women — I portray things from a woman's angle.