Marjane Satrapi, a brave voice against the theocratic regime of the Iranian Government, dies of heartbreak at the age of 56, a little over a year after the death of her beloved husband, Swedish actor, producer, and screenwriter Mattias Ripa, whom she called the love of her life.
In an era when artists fear talking about anything political, Marjane is an artist who used her art to express her anger and resentment at the injustices surrounding her.
The office of French President Emmanuel Macron announced her death on Thursday, and while paying tribute, the President said:” a great artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable”. The palace added: “With her childlike perspective, her irony, her tenderness, and her inner demons, the author created a deeply moving world with readers identified”.
Satrapi was born in 1969 to an upper-middle-class, communist-leaning family. She was taught to be an independent and free thinker. But the Iranian Revolution of 1979, in which the Islamic fundamentalists took power, had their life turned upside down. Growing up, Marjane had to witness the extreme brutalities of the government, her friends, and family getting arrested and murdered. During her teenage years itself she started rebelling against the government by disregarding the modesty codes and buying music banned by the regime. Concerned for her safety and to avoid the political extremism, her parents sent her to Austria in 1983.
She completed her secondary education at the Lycée Français de Vienne. A period of severe teenage alienation and isolation led her to go back to Iran in the late 1980s, where she studied visual communication and earned a master’s degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran. Later, she went to France and attended the Haute École des arts du Rhin(HEAR) to study decorative arts and visual communication.
Persepolis, the autobiographical graphic book that made her famous worldwide, was originally published in French in 4 parts starting from 2000 to 2004, and the English translation of the same is in 2 parts ( 2003 and 2004). It covered her life in Iran and Europe. The book later won the Angoul^eme Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoul^eme International Comics. Marjane preferred the term “ comic book” over “ graph book”, "People are so afraid to say the word 'comic,' It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail, and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel,' and that disappears. No: it's all comics,", she told the Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2011.
Persepolis was later adapted into an animated film with the same name. Marjane co-wrote and directed the film and became the first woman to be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards. However, the Iranian government denounced the film and got it dropped from the Bangkok International Film Festival. Her other novels include ‘ Embroideries’, ‘Chicken with Plums’, and ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’.
She also directed Radioactive, Poulet aux Prunes, and La Bande des Jotas. In an interview, she shared that filmmaking was never a dream, but she realised that cinema is a machine for creating compassion and empathy.
She outspokenly denounced the repression in Iran and was a fearless voice for exile and women's freedom. Her book ‘Women, Life and Freedom’ is a collection of graphic stories about the protest in 2022, after the death of Masha Amini, who was arrested by the morality police in Iran for not wearing her hijab properly. In 2023, she also led a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Paris in support of the five teenagers who were arrested for posting a dancing video on TikTok.
She gained French Nationality in 2006, after more than a decade in the country. Last year, she refused the French Legion d'Honneur as she believed the country was hypocritical in its dealings with Iran.
Even though the little girl from ‘Persepolis’ is no more, the relevance of her quote, “a human being is a human being, no matter where he comes from, “ grows.
