MARJANE SATRAPI

(22 November 1969 – 4 June 2026)

Marjane Satrapi was a most unusual figure in the cinema, just as she was a singular artist and human being. Her own life story was the subject of an Oscar-nominated cartoon and, as the director, she became the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in that category. The film was Persepolis (2007) and was based on her own autobiographical graphic novel, charting her childhood set against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution and her escape to France, which she eventually made her home. She went on to direct five other movies and was a popular writer of children’s fiction, making her one of the most widely read Iranian authors of all time. She was born in Rasht, in northwestern Iran, before moving to Tehran at the age of twenty days. When she was ten, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and she became an outspoken critic of the regime, before moving to Paris aged 25. In 2006 she gained French nationality and a year later directed Persepolis, the film of her early life, which won the jury prize at the Cannes film festival.

Following this success, Satrapi went on to direct the animated feature Chicken with Plums with her professional partner Vincent Paronnaud, also based on a graphic novel that she had written. Her next film, the crime-comedy Gang of the Jotas (2012), she directed herself and also starred in it, alongside her husband Mattias Ripa. Two years later she directed the black horror-comedy The Voices with Ryan Reynolds and Gemma Arterton and then the biopic of Marie Curie, Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike. Her final film as director was the French black comedy Dear Paris (2024), which was essentially about how several people were connected through death. Last year she turned down the legion d’honneur, the highest honour that France can bestow on a leading figure of merit, citing her adopted country’s hypocrisy in dealing with the Iranian regime.

An official statement released by her family announced that Satrapi, aged 56, died of sadness, following the death of her husband Mattias Ripa, the Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON