Marjan Satrapi attends La Bande des Jotas Photocall during the 7th Rome Film Festival in Rome on November 16, 2012.
Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images
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Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images
Marjan Satrapi, author of acclaimed graphic novels Persepolis And a leading champion for women’s rights in Iran died on Thursday. She was 56 years old.
The French presidential office confirmed his death in a statement, highlighting the universal message of freedom from his work.
Satrapi was born in 1969 in Tehran. Her childhood was spent in the shadow of polarization: although she grew up in a communist-leaning household and studied abroad in Vienna and France as a young adult, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and its resulting democratic regime indelibly changed her life.
Satrapi wrote about his adolescence in the new Islamic Republic – his rebellion, exile, return and permanent departure – in Persepolis. Published in four French volumes between 2000 and 2003, Satrapi’s autobiographical comic book became an international bestseller. It has since been translated into more than 20 languages.
“That’s the advantage of a comic,” Satrapi told NPR in 2024. “Because man’s first language is drawing.”
In 2007, Satrapi co-wrote and directed an animated film adaptation Persepolis With his creative partner Vincent Parronaud. The film won the prestigious Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and Satrapi received an Academy Award nomination in 2008. She was the first woman in history to receive a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category.
“The real issue for me is human rights, it’s freedom of speech,” Satrapi told NPR in 2007. “It’s freedom to think, you know.”
After the Iranian Revolution, a young Satrapi (along with every woman in Iran) found herself forced to wear a hijab. Satrapi said the cover restricted her right to free expression: “Wearing something I don’t want to wear, just not being able to express what I want to do, that was – that was something – I just couldn’t handle it.”
Satrapi continued to draw, write, act, direct, and advocate throughout her adult life. His last book, woman, life, freedom (2024) is a collaborative anthology – created in just five months – to bring together the works of artists and academics on the death of Mahsa Amini and the protests that followed in 2022.
