French-Iranian Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi dies of ‘sadness’

Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic caller was calved from her experiences of the Islamic gyration and warfare with Iraq.

French-Iranian writer and movie manager Marjane Satrapi has died astatine the property of 56.

Best known for her autobiographical graphic caller Persepolis, which she aboriginal directed arsenic a film, Satrapi’s passing was announced connected Thursday by French ⁠President Emmanuel Macron’s office.

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Her household said successful a connection sent to the AFP quality bureau that Satrapi had died of “sadness” a small implicit a twelvemonth aft the decease of her husband, Mattias Ripa.

Macron paid tribute to the writer and said “her passing marks the nonaccomplishment of a starring fig successful French civilization and an creator devoted to freedom, whose enactment carried a cosmopolitan connection and earned her immense planetary renown”.

The dissident writer and illustrator, calved successful 1969 successful Rasht successful bluish Iran, was from a agelong enactment of Iranian aristocrats. In 1983, her parents – politcally progressive Marxists who participated successful demonstrations against the shah – sent her to Austria to decorativeness her studies arsenic the 1979 Iranian gyration that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to powerfulness sparked increasing spiritual fundamentalism.

She returned location owed to homesickness and attended the University of Tehran, obtaining a grade successful ocular communications which would laic the instauration for her creator path, earlier leaving erstwhile much successful 1994 for France.

She remained successful her adopted state for overmuch of her life, but remained profoundly connected to her Iranian roots done her work.

Female agency, Western prejudice

Her black-and-white autobiographical novel, which archetypal came retired successful 2000, would beryllium calved from the experiences of her life, astir notably Iran’s Islamic revolution and the fallout of its warfare with Iraq.

The coming-of-age communicative weaves unneurotic boys, booze and punk rock, portion its monochromatic illustrations gully readers into the author’s satellite and the beardown communicative breathing beingness into each page.

Some critics praised the equilibrium of geopolitical trauma, gallows humour and idiosyncratic household history, and the mode the publication pushes speech stereotypes of Iran by illustrating pistillate agency.

Some others accused her of reinforcing Western prejudices astir Islam and Iran.

French directors Marjane Satrapi, right, and Vincent Paronnaud airs with their grant for champion debut movie for Persepolis astatine the French Cesar ceremonial successful Paris, connected February 22, 2008 [Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters]

The movie delves into her beingness astir increasing up a strong-willed young miss of intelligence parents.

“I travel from a state wherever a pistillate is worthy fractional a man,” she told US amusement outlet Variety successful 2007. “I ne'er thought I had 1 limb little conscionable due to the fact that I was a woman.”

Persepolis was aboriginal adapted into a movie which gained wide praise, and was nominated for  best animated diagnostic astatine the 2008 Academy Awards. It won the Cannes Jury Prize successful 2007 and the Cesar grant for Best First Film.

“What we wanted to accidental is, if these radical scare you, look closer: they person parents, they person lovers, they person hope, they person stories,” she told AFP successful an interrogation successful 2007 astatine Cannes.

She went connected to enactment connected much films which see Chicken with Plums, The Voices, which starred histrion Ryan Reynolds, and Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike arsenic idiosyncratic Marie Curie.

In 2024, she was offered France’s highest award, the Legion of Honour, but refused to judge it arsenic she felt France hadn’t done capable to enactment Iranian radical warring for democracy.

“Supporting the women’s gyration successful Iran cannot beryllium reduced to photos oregon speeches,” she wrote successful a January 2025 missive to French authorities. “When radical are warring for democracy, we should enactment them.”