Iranian French artist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, known for Oscar-nominated animation Persepolis, has died aged 56. A statement issued to Fren
Iranian French artist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, known for Oscar-nominated animation Persepolis, has died aged 56.
A statement issued to French news agency AFP by her friends and family said: “Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life.”
Ripa, a Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter, died on April 8 last year aged 53.
Satrapi lived in Paris after leaving Iran in 1994. Satrapi chronicled her early life, living through revolution in Iran and her subsequent move to Europe, in comic book Persepolis, which she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud as an animated feature.
The film premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2007, where it won the jury prize, and went on to scoop numerous awards including the Cesar for best first film and an Academy Award nomination – making Satrapi the first woman to be nominated for an animation Oscar.
She reunited with Paronnaud for live-action film Chicken With Plums, adapted from another of her comic books, which played in competition at Venice in 2011. The story is about Nasser Ali Khan, a relative of Satrapi’s and a Tar player, whose cherished instrument is broken after a heated argument with his wife. The book narrates the last eight days of his life as he lost the will to live.
In 2012, Satrapi wrote, directed and starred in low-budget comedy caper Gang Of The Jotas, in which two friends meet a woman on the run from a gang who killed her sister.
She then worked in the US on The Voices, a serial killer comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick, which debuted at Sundance in 2014.
This was followed by Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike as pioneering scientist Marie Curie, which was produced by the UK’s Shoebox Films and Working Title Films, backed by Studiocanal. Following its premiere at Toronto in 2018, it was one of the last films to be released in the UK before the Covid-19 lockdown shuttered cinemas.
Her final film was Dear Paris, a French comedy starring Monica Belluci, Ben Aldridge, Andre Dussollier and Rossy de Palma among others, in which several Paris residents find their lives turned upside down when death knocks on their door.
Satrapi was an outspoken critic of Iran’s theocratic government and last year refused the French legion d’honneur award over the country’s “hypocrisy” in its dealings with Iran, citing French visa policies that prevented dissidents leaving Iran.
Speaking to Screen International at Glasgow Film Festival in 2019, Satrapi reflected on how the Iranian government denounced Persepolis and how she remained in exile from her home country. “I cannot go back,” she said. “First it was a chosen exile, then it became a forced exile. I don’t want to return to a dictatorship and spend the rest of my life in jail being tortured.”
“Thank goodness Paris is chaotic,” she said of the city she came to call home. “Of course, I miss Iran but I have a great life. If you love what you do, you’ve won the Oscar of life.”
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