HUN 1978 | Director, Script: Judit Ember | Camera: János Illés, Béla Ferenczy | Editor: Annamária Komlóssy | Music: Zsolt Döme | Sound: István Sipos | Production: István Fogarasi | Editorial Staff: Miklós Vásárhelyi | Assistant Director: Lilla Mátis | b/w | DCP of 35mm | 92 min | hungarian OV with english SUB | Filmarchiv des Ungarischen Filminstituts

When she begain shooting Mistletoe, Judit Ember had already directed more than ten films, among them the situational documentary The Resolution (1972), which she developed with Gyula Gazdag. Listed by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best documentary films of all time, in Hungary it was nonetheless banned until the 1980s. Judit Ember has the questionable honour of having produced the most banned films in socialist Hungary. Though her films were not militant, she was considered "incorrigible": her protagonists simply talked about or showed their experiences – or what happened to them every day – without expressing outrage or making accusations.

The film Lehrgeschichte ("Parable", 1976) was also banned at the time due to its sensitive subject matter: it deals with a girl who tries to take her own life. We see the same girl a number of years later in Mistletoe, Ember's only feature documentary film, as a young mother of two – and soon to be three – children. With natural sympathy and gentle humour, Ember shows the multifaceted life of a family that works night and day to get a tiny step ahead. The director portrays three generations of women who rely on one another, getting so close to the family that the camera was allowed in the operating room to film the birth by caesarean section – a first in documentary film history. (Virág Bottlik, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin)