Photograph: Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images
Via AP:
"Acclaimed Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, a
prominent advocate for women’s rights, has died at 56, the French
presidency said Thursday.
"'Her passing marks the loss of a
leading figure of French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose
work carried a universal message and earned her immense international
acclaim,' the French presidency said in a statement.
"President
Emmanuel Macron and his wife 'pay tribute to a remarkable artist who
transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable,' the statement
said.
"News broadcaster BFM TV and other French media reported
Satrapi has 'died of sadness' a little over a year after the death of
her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Mattias Ripa, according to a
statement from people close to the artist.
"The French Academy of
Fine Arts, of which she was a member, expressed its deep sadness in a
social media statement, paying tribute to 'a passionate advocate for
cinema and film education' who earlier this year created a foundation to
help international students come to Paris to study film."
The Guardian:
"Writing on X, Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the
French National Assembly, said: 'Marjane Satrapi had turned her work
into an act of freedom. With Persepolis, she had given a face and a
voice to the Iranian revolution, proudly carrying the fight for women’s
freedom and dignity. France loses an immense artist. To her family, to
her loved ones, I offer my most sincere thoughts.'
"Born
in 1969 in Rasht, Iran, near the Caspian Sea, Satrapi was raised in
Tehran by her father, an engineer, and her mother, a dress designer. As a
teenager, she left Iran after her parents sent her to Europe to
continue her education, hoping to spare her from the restrictions
imposed under the Islamic Republic. She eventually settled in France,
arriving in 1994 and later becoming a French citizen in 2006.
"Throughout her life, Satrapi was a vocal opponent of Iran’s clerical establishment.
"In
2000 she published Persepolis, a comic book memoir that became an
international publishing phenomenon. It told the story of a rebellious
and outspoken young girl navigating the upheaval in Iran after the shah
is overthrown in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The
story follows the protagonist’s attempts to understand the country’s
violence and ideological control before she is sent alone to Europe at
the age of 14.
"Satrapi told the Guardian in 2024
that Persepolis was about making western readers reflect on the
humanity of Iranian people, that, 'Oh, they’re actually human beings
like us.'
"The memoir sold millions of copies,
established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in
the world, and its success challenged many western assumptions about
Iranian society and culture."
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