Ildikó Enyedi was born in 1955 in Budapest. She studied Economics and Filmmaking at the University of Budapest and later in Montpellier, France. In the years 1977 to 1985, she belonged to the artist group "Indigo". Subsequently, she worked at the Béla Balázs Studio – the only independent film studio in pre-1989 Eastern Europe; as well as at the "Studio of Young Artists". In 1990 she founded her own production company, the "Three Rabbits Studio", for which she has since worked as a screenwriter and director. Alongside this, she teaches filmmaking at the University of Budapest.
After a number of experimental and narrative short films, since 1989 she has created six feature films that have won several renowned awards. Enyedi received the Golden Camera Award for the best debut-film at the Cannes Film Festival for My 20th Century (1989).
With Magic Hunter and Tamás and Juli, she took part in the Official Competition at the Venice Film Festival in 1995 and 1997.
With Europe (2003), she provided – on the occasion of Hungary's entry into the European Union – a short contribution to the film project Európából Európába (From Europe into Europe) by ten Hungarian directors, including István Szabó, Miklós Janscó and Benedek Fliegauf.
From 2012 to 2014, she directed the television series Terápia, the Hungarian adaptation of HBO’s In Treatment.
Eighteen years after her last feature-film, Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul), her latest film, about “an incredible connection between two people”, won the Golden Bear at this year’s edition of the Berlin Festival, the FIPRESCI prize from the International Federation of Cinema Critics, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, as well as the Best Film Award at the Sydney Festival.