Iranian-French Cartoonist and Filmmaker Marjane Satrapi Has Died at 56

 

 

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."