The beginning of the “diaries” tetralogy, which Márta Mészáros would continue to film until 2000, Diary for My Children is an autobiographical fiction in which Juli appears as the director's alter ego. Like the character, Mészáros was also an orphan, after her father was killed in 1938 during a Stalinist purge. Between an attempt at forced conversion to communism and the desire to explore her family memories, a silent tragedy is built on the psychological and political consequences of the export of the Soviet model to eastern countries – in particular Hungary.

Diary for My Children won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes film festival in 1984. A new digital restoration of the film will be screened, in 4K.