Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi dies at 56

Acclaimed Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, a prominent advocate for women’s rights, has died at 56, the French presidency said Thursday.

Marjane Satrapi passes away at 56

“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.

Satrapi is best-known for her monochrome autobiographical comic book and film Persepolis, a coming-of-age tale set against the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran.

Persepolis won the Film Critics Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 2007 and the César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2008, in addition to being nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Oscars.

The film, which details her life in Tehran as the willful daughter of intellectual Marxists, is a reminder that Iranians are just like everyone else, Satrapi told a news agency in a 2007 interview in Cannes.

“What we wanted to say is, if these people scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories," she said.

Satrapi was born on November 22, 1969, in Rasht, Iran, but her parents sent her to Vienna, Austria, in 1983 to finish her studies because of the extremism in their country following the 1979 Revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power.

However, Satrapi, who found Austria hostile and who desperately missed her parents, returned to Iran in 1989 to attend Tehran University, where she earned a degree in visual communications.

By the time she graduated, Satrapi decided she finally was ready to leave Iran and accept the opportunities her parents had been so desperate to give her a decade before. In 1994 she moved to France. She studied in Strasbourg and later moved to Paris.

Her graphic novels also include Broderies and Poulet aux prunes, which also was adapted into a film. As a filmmaker, she has directed several works including La Bande des Jotas and Radioactive, a biography about the Polish physicist Marie Curie.

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