Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian-French cartoonist, filmmaker and activist, has died, France's presidency announced Thursday. She was 56.
People close to Satrapi said that she “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Mattias Ripa, a year ago, French media reported.
In the 2000s, she won major acclaim for her black-and-white comic series and movie "Persepolis," a story that mirrored her own upbringing during the Islamic Revolution. The film received a 2008 Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film; she was the first woman to receive an Academy Award nomination in that category.
Her other graphic novels included “Broderies” (“Embroideries”) and “Poulet aux prunes” (“Chicken with plums”), about the death of her great-uncle. Among her directing credits were the feature films "Radioactive," starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie, and "The Voices," starring Ryan Reynolds.
In the early 2020s, she coordinated the publication of a book that artistically depicted the women's revolution in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini. The resulting work, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” denounced the Iranian government's repression.
"We are not asking any Westerners to come and make a revolution in our place. Just look at these people. They really need people to watch them, they need somebody to testify that everything they’re doing for freedom means something," she said of the book in 2024. "And this is the way we change politics, through public opinion."
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