Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian graphic novelist and film director best known for Persepolis (2000–03), has died aged fifty-six.
Born in Iran in 1969, Satrapi was ten years old when the Iranian Revolution took place. In 1984 her parents sent her to finish secondary school in Vienna. After returning to Iran, where she obtained a degree in graphic arts from the School of Fine Arts at Tehran Islamic Azad University, she moved to France in 1994 and studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg.
In 2000, after moving to Paris, Satrapi started the series of comics Persepolis, based on her own experience growing up in Iran during and after the revolution, and her exile in Europe. The four volumes, published between 2000 and 2003, received widespread critical and public acclaim. In the following years, she also published Embroideries (2003) and Chicken with Plums (2004). In 2007 she directed the film adaptation of Persepolis, alongside comics artist and filmmaker Vincent Paronnaud, which obtained the Jury Prize at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, as well as César Awards for Best Film and Best Adaptation in 2008.
Throughout her lifetime, Satrapi remained an outspoken critic of the Iranian government. Following the protests that erupted in 2022 after the death in police custody of the young woman Mahsa Amini, who had been beaten and arrested for wearing her hijab improperly, she edited a collection of comics by artists, activists and journalists titled Woman, Life, Freedom after the liberation movement of the same name. In 2025 she refused the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit, citing France’s hypocritical attitude towards Iran and its people.
Marjane Satrapi was married to the Swedish filmmaker Mattias Ripa until his death last year. After his death, she founded the Mattias and Marjane Ripa-Satrapi Cinema Foundation at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris to provide grants for foreign students to study film in Paris.
In a statement to Agence France-Presse, people close to Satrapi said that she had ‘died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life’.
