Marjane Satrapi – RIP
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French-Iranian artist, author, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi has passed away at the age of 56. Marjane is perhaps best known for her autobiographical graphic novel “Persopolis” and the film she directed by the same name.
The family released a statement announcing the death to AFP:
Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life.
Marjane’s husband passed away April 8 of last year. The family did not give additional information regarding her passing.
In a statement released by the President Macron’s government called her work a “figure of French culture and of an artist enamored of freedom, whose work carried a universal message and had earned her immense international renown.”
Marjane created eight graphic novels. Her seminal work, Persepolis is a four part series depicting her childhood in Tehran during the Islamic revolution and her difficult entry into adult life in Europe.
Marjane was born on November of 1969. She grew up in an affluent family in Tehran and she attended a French-language school. According to her Wikipedia entry her maternal great-grandfather was a shah of Iran from 1848 to 1896. Her family was politically active and against the monarchy of the last Shah regime. During her teen years, her parents became concerned about her activism and rebellion against the Islamic fundamentalist regime. She was sent to Austria to study. She returned to Iran and earned a degree in visual communication. In 1994, at age 25, she moved to Paris to study and her parents told her to stay.
She began writing Persepolis there in France. It was released in volumes starting in 2000 to 2003. Eventually it would be translated in multiple languages and go on to win the prize Best First Album Angoulême International Comic Strip Festival (2001), the France Info Prize for News and Reporting Comics (2002), a Harvey Award for Best American Edition of a Foreign Work (2004), and an Ignatz Prize for the best graphic novel for her second volume (2005).
The animated film, released in 2007, tied for the jury prize at Cannes, was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, four Annie Awards, and two British Academy Film Awards. It only won awards in foreign ceremonies such as Globes de Cristal Awards (French), São Paulo International Film Festival (Brazil), Vancouver International Film Festival (Canada), and Argentine Film Critics Association (Argentina).
The Iranian government was not happy with the film. They sent a letter to the French embassy in Tehran that read,
This year the Cannes Film Festival, in an unconventional and unsuitable act, has chosen a movie about Iran that has presented an unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution in some of its parts.
In 2025 she declined the Legion of Honour, France’s top order of merit, citing France’s “hypocritical attitude” toward Iran. Her reasoning from Le Monde:
I cannot ignore what I see as a hypocritical attitude of France toward Iran,” she explained, at a time when her country of origin was experiencing a new wave of repression. She also mentioned a “gesture of solidarity with Iranians, especially women and young people from Iran, but also with [her] fellow French citizens held hostage in Iran.”
Our condolences to Marjane’s family, friends, and fans.
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