Friday, June 5, 2026

A00101 - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French Artist, Director and Writer Best Known for the Graphic Novel "Persepolis"

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Marjane Satrapi
مرجان ساتراپی
Satrapi in 2008
Born
Marjane Ebrahimi

22 November 1969
Rasht, Imperial State of Iran
Died4 June 2026 (aged 56)
Paris, France
Citizenship
  • Iran
  • France
Occupations
  • Artist
  • film director
  • writer
Notable work
Spouses
  • Reza
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1989; div. 1994)​
  • Mattias Ripa
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1996; died 2025)​
AwardsFull list

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Marjane Satrapi (born November 22, 1969, Rasht, Iran—died June 4?, 2026, Paris, France) was an Iranian artist, director, and writer whose graphic novels explore the gaps and junctures between Iran and the West. She lived in Paris.

Early life

Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969. An only child, she moved with her father, an engineer, and her mother, a clothing designer, to Tehrān, where she grew up and attended the Lycée Français.

After the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79, her family’s Western way of life drew the attention of Iranian authorities, and by 1984 her parents had decided to send her to Austria to attend school. A failed relationship there exacerbated her sense of alienation and contributed to a downward spiral that left her homeless and using drugs.

Satrapi returned to Tehrān at age 19, studied art, and, after a short-lived marriage, moved back to Europe in 1993. In France she earned a degree in art, and by the mid-1990s she was living permanently in Paris.

Persepolis series

Satrapi published the books Persepolis 1 (2000) and Persepolis 2 (2001) in France; they were combined as Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood when translated into English in 2003. Sometimes described as a graphic memoir, Persepolis melds the format of a graphic novel with a prose-only memoir. In it she used a stripped-down visual style that shows the influence of German Expressionism to tell the story of her childhood in Tehrān. It is a story that many readers outside of Iran have found at once familiar—a restive adolescent who loves Nike shoes and rock music—and foreign—she is stopped and threatened with arrest for wearing those shoes as she walks through a city damaged by bombing raids during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–88. Satrapi adapted her book as a film, also called Persepolis (2007), which was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature. She directed it with Vincent Paronnaud.

Persepolis 3 and Persepolis 4 were published in France in 2002 and 2003, respectively, and were translated together into English as Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return in 2004. Persepolis 2 begins where Persepolis ends, with Satrapi living in Europe. The family friend with whom Satrapi was intended to live instead shuffles her to a boarding house, and her life gradually dissolves. She returns to her parents in Iran but feels out of place, and she eventually leaves again for Europe.

From Embroideries and Chicken with Plums to Woman, Life, Freedom

Satrapi, who writes in French, continued to probe the boundaries between graphic novel and memoir with Broderies (2003; Embroideries). It consists of stories told by Satrapi’s mother, grandmother, and other female relatives and friends about their experiences as women living in Iran.

Satrapi also created the illustrated children’s books Les Monstres n’aiment pas la lune (2001; Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon) and Le Soupir (2004; The Sigh).

In Poulet aux prunes (Chicken with Plums), published in 2004, Satrapi recounts the story of her great-uncle, a renowned tar (lute) player who resolves to die when he cannot adequately replace his broken instrument. It was adapted as a movie that was released in 2011; Satrapi wrote and directed it with Paronnaud.

Satrapi’s other work as a film director includes the English-language dark comedy The Voices (2014), which presents a man who, having failed to take his medication, becomes a murderer, and Radioactive (2019), a biopic about Marie Curie.

Quick Facts
Born:
November 22, 1969, Rasht, Iran
Died:
June 4?, 2026, Paris, France

Satrapi coordinated the work of more than 20 artists and writers to create Femme, vie, liberté, a graphic novel published in French in 2023 and in English as Woman, Life, Freedom in 2024. It shares the name of the protest movement that rose to global awareness after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, who died while in Iranian police custody after being arrested for “improper” clothing in 2022. Woman, Life, Freedom tells the stories of the women demanding their rights through the movement. In 2024 Satrapi, who contributed a section on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told NPR why she found it essential to document this new Iranian revolution through images:

A comic has this advantage because the first language of the human being is drawing. So it’s an immediate relationship that we have with image.…Instead of using 1,000 words, you draw an image, and a human being understands what this image is about.

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Marjane Satrapi (French: [maʁʒan satʁapi]; Persian: مرجان ساتراپی, [mæɾˈdʒɒːn(e) sɒːtɾɒːˈpiː];[a] 22 November 1969 – 4 June 2026) was an Iranian and French[1][2] graphic novelist, film director, and children's book author. Her best-known works include the graphic novel Persepolis and its film adaptation; the graphic novel Chicken with Plums; Woman, Life, Freedom;[3] and the Marie Curie biopic Radioactive.

The success of Persepolis established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in the world, and her role in co-directing the film adaptation led to her becoming the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[4]

Life and career

Early life

Satrapi was born on 22 November 1969 in Rasht,[5][6] northwestern Iran,[7] where she spent her first 20 days before the family moved to Tehran, where she grew up in an upper-middle class Iranian family and attended the French-language school Lycée Razi.[8][9] Both her parents were politically active and supported leftist causes against the monarchy of the last Shah. According to Satrapi, her maternal great-grandfather was Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, who was the shah of Iran from 1848 to 1896.[7] Satrapi said her maternal grandfather was once the governor of Gilan province. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, her parents had to live under the rule of the Islamic fundamentalists who had taken power.[8]

During her youth, Satrapi was exposed to the growing brutalities of the various regimes. Many of her family and friends were persecuted, arrested, and murdered. She found a hero in her paternal uncle, Anoosh, who had been a political prisoner and lived in exile in the Soviet Union for a time. Satrapi greatly admired her uncle, and he in turn doted on her, treating her more as a daughter than a niece. Once back in Iran, Anoosh was arrested again and sentenced to death. He was allowed only one visitor the night before his execution, and he requested Satrapi.[10] His body was buried in an unmarked grave at the Evin Prison.[11]

Although Satrapi's parents encouraged her to be strong-willed and defend her rights, they grew concerned for her safety. In her teens by this time, she was skirting trouble with police for disregarding modesty codes and buying music banned by the regime.[12]

They arranged for her to live with a family friend, Zozo, to study abroad, and in 1983, at age 14, she arrived in Vienna, Austria, to attend the Lycée Français de Vienne.[13] She stayed in Vienna through her secondary school years, often moving from one residence to another as situations changed, and sometimes stayed at friends' homes. Eventually, she was homeless and lived on the streets for three months, until she was hospitalized for an almost deadly bout of bronchitis.[14]

Upon recovery, she returned to Iran and studied visual communication. She eventually obtained a master's degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran.[15]

When she was 21, Satrapi married a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War, whom she later divorced. She then moved to Strasbourg, France, to study at the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR). Her parents encouraged her to stay in Europe permanently.[16]

Career

Comics

Satrapi became famous worldwide for her autobiographical comic books, originally published in French in four parts from 2000 to 2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as Persepolis and Persepolis 2. They depict her childhood in Iran and adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. In 2013, Chicago schools were ordered by the district to remove Persepolis from classrooms because of its graphic language and violence. The ban incited protests and controversy.[17] Her later publication Embroideries (Broderies) was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award her graphic novel Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes) won.[18][19] She also contributed to the op-ed section of The New York Times.[20]

ComicsAlliance listed Satrapi as one of 12 women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition.[21]

Satrapi preferred the term "comic book" to "graphic novel".[22] "People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'", she told The Guardian in 2011. "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."[23]

Films

Marjane Satrapi at the premiere of Persepolis

Persepolis was adapted into an animated film of the same name. It debuted at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May and shared a Special Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light (Luz silenciosa).[24] Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud, the French-language picture stars the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, and Simon Abkarian. The English version, starring the voices of Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn, and Iggy Pop, was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards in January 2008.[25] Satrapi was the first woman to be nominated for the award. The Iranian government denounced the film and got it dropped from the Bangkok International Film Festival.[26] Persepolis was a successful film commercially (with over a million admissions in France alone) and critically, winning Best First Film at the César Awards 2008. The film reflects many tendencies of first-time filmmaking in France, such as a focus on intimate rites of passage and ambivalent recounting of coming-of-age moments.[27]

In late 2011, Satrapi and Paronnaud continued their success with another film adaptation of one of Satrapi's graphic novels—the live-action comedy drama Chicken with Plums. It follows one of Satrapi's relatives' final days, as he has lost the will to live.[28][29]

In 2012, Satrapi directed and acted in the comedy crime film La bande des Jotas (Gang of the Jotas), from her own screenplay.[30][31]

In 2014, Satrapi directed the black comedy film The Voices, from a screenplay by Michael R. Perry.[32] The film stars Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick, and Gemma Arterton,[33] and follows a factory worker with schizophrenia whose hallucinations drive him to commit murder while conversing with his talking pets and the severed heads of his victims.[34]

In 2019, Satrapi directed Radioactive, a biopic of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. It is an adaptation of a book of the same name. Initially intended to premiere in 2020, it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later released online.[35]

In 2021, Satrapi starred in the French animated short film The Soloists, voicing Ava, one of the three eponymous sisters fighting to express their musical talents in a country with blatantly sexist laws.[36]

In 2024, Satrapi directed another black comedy, Dear Paris (Paradis Paris), which was featured at the Torino Film Festival. It explores several interconnected stories of people's lives affected by death.[37][38][39]

Political activism

After the Iranian elections in June 2009, Satrapi and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before Green Party members in the European Parliament to present a document allegedly received from a member of the Iranian electoral commission claiming that the reform candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, had actually won the election, and that the conservative incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, had received only 12% of the vote.[40]

In 2022, Satrapi voiced her support for the Mahsa Amini protests.[41] She continued on this path by directing and coordinating a graphic anthology documenting the uprising and its cultural context for Western audiences in solidarity with these women.[42] She believed in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement as a cultural revolution.[43] She also supported protests for freedom and rights against the regime in Iran.[44][45]

In January 2025, Satrapi refused the Legion of Honour, France's highest and most prestigious award, citing French hypocrisy toward Iranian people.[46] In an open letter addressed to the Minister of Culture, she explained her discontent in France's visa policies, writing, "I can't continue seeing the children of Iranian oligarchs come to spend their holidays in France, even become naturalised, while at the same time young dissidents have difficulty in obtaining a tourist visa to come to see what the country of the Enlightenment and human rights looks like."[47] She wrote, "supporting the women's revolution in Iran cannot be reduced to photos with victims or celebrities during commemorations of the death of Mahsa Amini ... Iranians don't need communication, we need concrete actions."[48] Satrapi emphasised that her rejection of the decoration "is in no way an action or a thought against France. On the contrary, I deeply love this country, which is my country."[49]

Personal life and death

Satrapi lived in Paris, France,[8] where she met Swedish actor and producer Mattias Ripa.[50] She was married to Ripa until his death in 2025 at the age of 53.[51] After Ripa's death, Satrapi set up the Mattias and Marjane Ripa-Satrapi Cinema Foundation as a way to provide support for foreign students who want to study filmmaking in Paris.[50]

Apart from her native language, Farsi, she spoke French, English, Swedish, German, and Italian.[52]

Satrapi died in Paris in June 2026, aged 56.[53] Her family said in a statement that she had "died of sadness" over her husband's death.[54][55][56] Numerous public figures paid tribute to Satrapi, including writer Margaret Atwood, President of France Emmanuel Macron and Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi.[57][58][59]

Awards

Works

French

English

Filmography

YearFilmDirectorWriterNotes
2007PersepolisYesYesCo-directed with Vincent Paronnaud;
Nominated: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature[68]
Nominated: BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language[69]
Nominated: BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film[69]
Nominated: Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film[70]
Won: The Cinema for Peace Award for the Most Valuable Film of the Year[71]
2011Chicken with PlumsYesYesCo-directed with Vincent Paronnaud[72]
2012La bande des Jotas (Gang of the Jotas)YesYesAlso actress, costume and production design[73]
2014The VoicesYesNo[74]
2019RadioactiveYesNo[75]
2021The SoloistsNoNoAva (voice)[76]
2024Dear Paris (Paradis Paris)YesYesScreenplay written with Marie Madinier[77]

Notes

  1.  The [-e] is the izāfa, which is a grammatical marker linking two words together. It is not indicated in writing, and is not part of the name itself, but is pronounced in Persian language when a first and last name are used together.

References

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  77.  "Dear Paris". Filmfest München. 2024. Retrieved 23 November 2025.

Further reading

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Marjane Satrapi’s quotes reflect her insights on dignity, education, art, and human understanding, often blending personal experience with social commentary.

Notable Quotes on Life and Dignity

  • "In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself." Goodreads
  • "Nothing's worse than saying goodbye. It's a little like dying." Goodreads
  • "One can forgive but one should never forget." Goodreads
  • "Life is too short to be lived badly." A-Z Quotes

Quotes on Education and Knowledge

  • "Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: one must educate oneself." Quotefancy
  • "I don't believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education." BrainyQuote
  • "All big changes of the world come from words." Quotefancy

Quotes on Art and Expression

  • "Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both." A-Z Quotes+1
  • "Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It’s a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself." Quotefancy
  • "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." BrainyQuote

Quotes on Identity, Culture, and Society

  • "If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly." A-Z Quotes
  • "Human beings have a lot of problems identifying themselves with other human beings who don't resemble them exactly. But there's something about drawing that means that anyone can identify to a drawing." BrainyQuote
  • "The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people." A-Z Quotes

Quotes from Persepolis

  • "You must base everything on these three rules: behave well, speak well, act well." Goodreads
  • "For a revolution to succeed, the entire population must support it." Goodreads
  • "I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one." Goodreads
  • "We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends." Goodreads
    These quotes collectively showcase Satrapi’s reflections on personal integrity, the power of education, the universality of human experience, and the expressive potential of art, making her work both deeply personal and socially resonant.

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 Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French author whose graphic novel series “Persepolis” introduced millions of readers to the struggles of ordinary Iranians during the turbulent years around the Islamic Revolution, has died at 56.

The office of President Emmanuel Macron of France announced her death in a statement on Thursday, but did not specify where, when or how she died.

“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the statement said.

With the publication of “Persepolis” in the early 2000s, Ms. Satrapi became one of the best-known exponents of a form of graphic novel — influenced by Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” — that combined political history and memoir.

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A red book cover has a cartoon of an unsmiling young girl with her arms crossed at the center.
The first volume of an English translation of “Persepolis,” Ms. Satrapi’s semi-autobiographical graphic memoir, was published in 2003, a few years after the French original.Credit...Turtleback Books

The protagonist, Marji, was depicted living through some of the most difficult years of Iranian history, closely mirroring Ms. Satrapi’s own life.

Both author and character were born in Iran in 1969. Both were about 10 when the Shah was overthrown. Both lived through the rise of the clerics and the horror of the Iran-Iraq War, and both left the country at 14 to study in Austria.

ImageA page of “Persepolis” has seven panels depicting the relationship of a mother and daughter.
A New York Times review of the book said it “dances with drama and insouciant wit,” its inky black-and-white drawings modeled on contemporary comics and Persian miniatures.Credit...Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby's

In 1994, Ms. Satrapi moved to Paris, where she wrote the “Persepolis” series. The books were published in France from 2000 to 2003; the first volume of an English translation was published in 2003, and the second volume was released a year later.


Millions of readers bought the books, which became a popular school assignment and among the widest-read works to explore the interior lives of modern Iranians. The series was adapted into a 2007 film that was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature.

“Persepolis,” the author Fernanda Eberstadt wrote in a New York Times review of the book, “dances with drama and insouciant wit,” its inky black-and-white drawings modeled on contemporary comics and Persian miniatures.

Not quite two decades later, Ms. Satrapi set to work documenting another tumultuous moment in Iranian history: the unrest in 2022 that followed the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained and accused of violating a law requiring women to wear the hijab in public.

In protest, women across Iran tore off their veils, in one of the most significant cultural and political moments in the country since the 1979 revolution.


Protests broke out in Iran in 2022 following the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman. Ms. Satrapi’s book inspired by the events, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” came out in 2024.Credit...Woman, Life, Freedom

Ms. Satrapi’s work on the subject culminated in 2024 with the release of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” another work of graphic nonfiction. She contributed some drawings, but told The Times that she was more of a “director” of the project, which also featured work by other artists, activists, academics and journalists.

“Even basic human rights, they deny us,” she said of the Iranian government after the book was released. “You don’t have the right to dance, you don’t have the right to sing, you don’t have the right to do this, you don’t have the right to do that.”

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Ms. Satrapi stands with her hands in the pockets of a coat, with writing surrounding the image.
Ms. Satrapi contributed some drawings to “Woman, Life, Freedom,” but said that she was more of a “director” of the project, which also featured work by other artists, activists, academics and journalists.Credit...Seven Stories Press

Marjane Satrapi was born on Nov. 22, 1969, in Rasht, near the Caspian Sea, and grew up in Tehran. She had aristocratic ancestors, and her parents were cosmopolitan leftists; her father was an engineer and her mother designed dresses.

They opposed the Shah and protested against his government, but were disillusioned by the political and cultural crackdown that followed the revolution and the end of his rule. Marjane’s uncle was accused of being a Soviet spy, jailed and executed.

Marjane bridled against the new restrictions on dress and behavior. When she was 14, she hit a school principal who had tried to confiscate her jewelry, and her parents, worried for her safety, sent her to live with an Iranian family in Austria. There, she was overwhelmed by the experience of a very different world.

“At her nadir,” Simon Hattenstone wrote in The Guardian in 2008, “she was peddling drugs, homeless, and she almost died from bronchitis. After four years in Vienna, she admitted defeat, put on her veil and returned home.”

Back in Iran in 1989, she studied art in Tehran and had an early marriage that ended in divorce, then returned to Europe.

“Probably I left Iran because I was not brave enough,” she told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2003. “I just needed to have more social freedom to be able to do my work.”

She got a second art degree in Strasbourg, France, before moving to Paris.

Image
Ms. Satrapi puts one hand to her chest while holding a lit cigarette in the other.
Ms. Satrapi in 2012. Though she lived in France, she wrote that “to me the word ‘home’ has only one meaning: Iran.”Credit...Srdjan Stevanovic/WireImage, via Getty Images

“I like living there because I can smoke everywhere, but it is going to change,” she said in 2007, around the time that smoking was banned in many public spaces in France. (Two years before, she had published an illustrated ode to smoking in The Times.)

Maybe, she mused, she would move to Greece, which had yet to introduce such stringent smoking restrictions.

Her husband, Mattias Ripa, who helped translate “Persepolis” into English, died last year. Information about her survivors was not immediately available.

Ms. Satrapi wrote several children’s books and other graphic novels, including “Chicken With Plums,” the story of the death of her great-uncle, which was also turned into a film. Another of her works, “Embroideries,” depicted Iranian women discussing love, sex and men over afternoon tea.

She directed several feature films, including “The Voices” (2014), with Ryan Reynolds, and “Radioactive” (2019), starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie.

Her feature films included “The Voices” (2014), with Ryan Reynolds, and “Radioactive” (2019), starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie.Credit...Lionsgate and Amazon, via Everett Collection

She also won acclaim as a painter and was elected in 2024 to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, one of the highest honors in the French art world.

Though she created some of the best-known works in the graphic novel genre, Ms. Satrapi told The Times in 2007 that she never liked the category’s name.

“I think they made up this term for the bourgeoisie not to be scared of comics,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, this is the kind of comics you can read.’”


She wrote frequently about her perpetual sense of dislocation — living away from her home country, but thinking constantly of it.

“I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word ‘home’ has only one meaning: Iran,” Ms. Satrapi wrote in a 2009 essay for The Times.

“No matter how much I am in love with Paris and its indescribable beauty,” she added, “Tehran with all its ugliness will in my eyes forever be the ‘bride’ of all cities around the world.”

Zachary Woolfe contributed reporting.

Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.

Ségolène Le Stradic a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Paris.


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