By Kayhan Life Staff
Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born author and filmmaker whose graphic novel “Persepolis” became an international bestseller, has passed away at the age of 56. Her family said in a statement that she had “died of sadness” a little over a year after the loss of her husband Mattias Ripa, according to French news reports.
French President Emmanuel Macron issued a statement hailing Satrapi as “a personality in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and had brought her immense international notoriety.”
Satrapi had been living in France since 1994 and became a French citizen in 2006. The film adaptation of “Persepolis,” which she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, winning the jury prize, and subsequently garnered an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature — the first time a woman had ever been shortlisted for the animation prize.
Her graphic novel “Chicken With Plums,” adapted as a live-action film and co-directed by Paronnaud, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2011. The film starred Mathieu Amalric and Golshifteh Farahani. Isabella Rossellini was also in the cast.
Satrapi was an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Last year, when France made her a Knight of the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest distinction, she refused to accept it, blaming “the hypocritical attitude of France vis a vis Iran,” and expressing “solidarity with Iranians, especially with Iran’s women and youth” — although she explained that this was not an action against France. “On the contrary, I have a profound love of this country which is my own,” she said.
“France is my adoptive stepmother,” she told Paris Match magazine in 2021. “She has been kind to me, kinder than my own mother. Many of the things that I was able to do in my life, I owe to France and to its generosity.”
In 2024, Satrapi became the second Iranian-born personality (after Empress Farah Pahlavi) to be elected to France’s prestigious Académie des Beaux-arts – or Fine Arts Academy. A month later, she unveiled a monumental tapestry she designed to mark the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Satrapi was born in 1969 in the Iranian city of Rasht. The only child of secular, Westernized intellectuals, she grew up in Tehran and attended the Lycée Français until the age of 14, when her parents decided to send her to Austria to study, fearing that she might get in trouble with the authorities.
After settling in Vienna, she had a failed relationship which sent her into a downward spiral that led to homelessness and drug abuse. She returned to Tehran at the age of 19, studied art, and after a short-lived marriage, moved to France in 1993.
After completing a degree in Illustration from the Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts, she moved to Paris, where she lived with her Swedish husband, Mattias Ripa, until his death last year.
“Persepolis” chronicles her adolescence and young adulthood in post-revolutionary Iran and in Austria before she settles in France. Published in French in 2000, it is considered one of the most successful graphic novels of all time. Translated into English and at least 20 other languages, it has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Satrapi continued to explore the boundaries between the graphic novel and the memoir with “Embroideries” (2003), an account of her candid conversations in Tehran with her mother, grandmother and other female relatives and friends about love, sex and men; “Chicken with Plums,” the story of her great-uncle, a renowned tar (lute) player who resolves to die when he cannot properly replace his broken instrument; and the illustrated children’s books “Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon” (2001) and “The Sigh” (2004). She also directed “The Voices” (2014) and “Radioactive” (2019), a biopic about Marie Curie.
In 2021, her striking portraits of women with red lips and manes of jet-black hair were showcased at the Art Paris art fair.
In 2023, Satrapi, together with four Iranian and 13 non-Iranian illustrators, released a book titled “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Originally published in French, the book has been translated into English and other languages, and the Persian version of the book is accessible online.
Satrapi came up with the concept for the book together with Abbas Milani – Stanford University’s Director of Iranian Studies — and Farid Vahid — a Paris-based academic specialized in Iranian studies. Satrapi then collaborated with other writers and illustrators (including Mana and Touka Neyestani) on the publication, writing texts and producing drawings and the cover design.
