Juli, a teenage girl and her grandparents come to Hungary after living in Soviet Russia as Hungary immigrants in 1947. Magda, a single woman and a high-ranking bureaucrat, helps Juli’s family and makes Juli her adopted daughter but Magda’s cold and coercive attitude makes Juli feel humiliated. Going to the cinema is the only way to soothe her longing for her mother who died during child birth and her father who disappeared for certain political reasons. Different from the very dogmatic Magda, Janos, Magda\'s old comrade is the only dependable person for Juli. Juli notices that Magda intends to use Janos politically, and it causes her to become more estranged from Magda.
 It is the first of Márta Mészáros\' four films taking an autobiographical \"Diary\" film which were produced over 20 years beginning in 1984. The film sharply criticizes how the bureaucratism turns away human\'s freedom and historical truth through two friends who used be political comrades and also shows the story of a teenage girl\'s growth while going through the experiences of isolation, loss, constraint and resistance in Eastern Europe during a time of political upheaval. Interwoven together a documentary and a fiction, the black and white images vividly represent a young girl\'s inner confusion. Shot by Miklos Jancso Jr., director Mészáros\' son, it won the Cannes Grand Prize of the Jury award, 1984. (NAM In-young)