SPOTLIGHT July 2026: MARJANE SATRAPI (1969-2026), Iconic Filmmaker, Novelist, Activist
The world lost a great storyteller and a woman with a strong sense of justice when Marjane Satrapi passed away on June 4th of this year. The Iranian and French artist was an award winning graphic novelist, film director, and political activist best known for her autobiographical graphic memoir Persepolis. As filmmaker, she went on to direct live action films like 2011’s Chicken with Plums, which was based on her graphic novel of the same name, 2019’s Radioactive, about Marie Curie, and 2024’s Dear Paris, the last film she directed before her death. Her last published work was Woman, Life, Freedom, a 2024 collection of graphic storytelling about the present Iranian revolution For it, she collaborated with activists, artists, journalists, and academics to relate the story of Kurdish-Iranian student Mahsa Jina Manini, who was arrested in 2022 for not properly wearing her headscarf. She was subsequently beaten so badly she died three days later. Her death sparked protests that spread throughout the country. The protesters chanted the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom,” which was adopted as the name for her book inspired by the events.
Marjane Satrapi represents the fearlessness and courage it takes to be an artist and visionary, even in the midst of chaos and authoritarianism. For that reason, we chose her as our Spotlight for July, 2026, with gratitude and appreciation for her career and life as a female filmmaker, artist, and vocal activist for the betterment of women not only in her country of origin, Iran, but around the world.
LIVING IN CHALLENGING TIMES
Satrapi was born an only child in 1969, in Rasht, the capital of the Gilan Province in northwestern Iran, but only lived her first 20 days there. Her family moved to Tehran, where she spent her early childhood attending a French school. Because of the increasingly chaotic political climate at home, her parents sent her to Austria in 1984 to study. She returned to Iran in 1988, due to severe homesickness, a feeling of isolation living in Austria as a teen, and a struggle with homelessness and depression. She went to university in Tehran, earning a Masters degree in visual communication, though it was challenging because of the strict state-enforced fundamentalism and the way the regime viewed women. The classrooms were strictly segregated by gender, and studies, especially anatomical studies, were severely limited for women. The female students were subjected to intense surveillance by the university’s “ideological compliance” monitors. During her time as a student at university, she regularly challenged the rules. One incident shown in Persepolis showed how she confronted officials who criticized female students for their dress, while male students were able to wear whatever they’d like.
She was always one to buck the system, even at great risk to herself and her education. Off campus, she celebrated her own interests by listening to forbidden Western music, drinking alcohol, and wearing makeup. For her final Master’s thesis, she designed a theme park concept based on traditional Persian mythology, instead of the expected Islamic themes.
After an ill-fated and short marriage, she moved permanently to France, first to study in Strasbourg to study illustration at the Ecole Superieure des Art Decoratifs, before settling in Paris, where she lived out the rest of her life.
FAME THROUGH COMICS
Satrapi often regaled her friends in France with stories about her upbringing in Tehran, which they believed should be spread to a wider audience. She was moved to create Persepolis, in part, for that reason, but also by a drive to challenge Western stereotypes. After moving to Paris, friends introduced her to the work of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which was a massive inspiration to her, showing that illustrated memoirs could tackle heavy, complex subjects, while making personal experiences feel universal.
She wrote Persepolis over a period of about four years, completing the first volume in 2000, and publishing the four individual French volumes subsequently until 2003. Persepolis is a major literary and cultural milestone because it humanized the people of Iran to a world in which they’d been reduced and vilified. She filtered complex historical trauma through the eyes of a child, and in so doing, allowed for empathy for her own experiences as well as many other Iranians living under a strict religious regime. By using minimalist black and white comic-style illustrations, she created something approachable that exposed the struggles of everyday Iranians, who, even to this day, continue to fight for their rights from inside a country ruled by a totalitarian religious establishment.
She has spoken out about how Iranian and American societies parallel each other:
“I do not see a true separation of church and state in the US. Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand the difference between the leaders of Iran and the United States. May hears ago Iran had a leader with a beard who said, “Read the Koran, it is good, we are good and we must go after and destroy the Great Satan.” Now the United States has a leader who says, “Read the bible. It is good, we are good and we have to go after the Axis Of Evil” So can you tell me the difference? Oh yes, one has a beard, the other doesn’t and of course the one without the beard has a powerful army.”
Please understand that I am not making a judgment on what is good or bad. That is not my intention. I am simply stating that I am a human being whose life has been destroyed by politics. My purpose is to show the public what politics can do to the average people of a country.”
Her graphic memoir Persepolis won awards across the world, including the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award and the Angoulême Prize for Best Script in France, and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. It has also been ranked mong the best works of the 21st century by both The Guardian and The New York Times.
EXPANDING INTO FILM
The popularity of Persepolis naturally led to the 2007 animated movie because producers and filmmakers were captivated by the deeply personal yet accessible storytelling of her upbringing in Iran. The graphic design of her books were perfectly suited for animation. She co-wrote and co-directed the film with comic artist Vincent Paronnaud, using traditional ink and paper animation to preserve the original look of the story. The film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as receiving Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for Best Animated Feature.
After co-directing Persepolis, Satrapi wanted to try something completely new. Animation is notoriously labor intensive and time consuming. She believed animation was the best way to express some of the aspects of her own life and the political upheaval happening in Iran at the time. However, with her next project Chicken with Plums, she felt the highly emotional story of a man dying of heartbreak would be understood in live action. She also wanted to collaborate with actors on set and was fascinated by the way light and color can be manipulated in live action film.
After Chicken with Plums was released, she directed three other live action features, 2014’s The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds, 2019’s Radioactive, with Rosamund Pike starring as Marie Curie, and 2024’s Dear Paris, a black comedy featuring an acting ensemble that included Monica Bellucci and Eduardo Noriega.
A LIFE OF ACTIVISM
Marjan Satrapi’s entire life was an act of protest, of activism. Her art was a statement against oppression, censorship, western stereotypes, and the misogyny often part of theocratic government.
She always rejected the label of cultural ambassador, believing part of the world’s problems stem from reductive understanding of other cultures, and wanting to speak more to individuality and less to the representation of an entire nation’s people.
Right around the same time she was working on Dear Paris, she was working on a graphic anthology Woman, Life, Freedom. which and was released in September of 2023, with the English version following in March of 2024. A collective book by 17 Iranian and international comic book artists, it tells the story of Mahsa Amini, the 22 year old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained for not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf which led to her death from beatings by government officials who held her captive. Protests after her death have become a broad movement challenging the theocracy that has been in place since 1979. Her inspiration for making the comic book was to explain to non-Iranian audiences what was happening in Iran, and to speak for the many protestors and activists who risk their lives and freedom to stand up for their rights.
In addition to the books she released, she actively organized and supported demonstrations against the Iranian government, including rallying outside the Iranian embassy in Paris, and held both her native and adopted governments accountable.
Another demonstration of her commitment to activism and standing up for her beliefs is her refusal of the Legion of Honor. Satrapi lived in France for over 32 years, relocating to Strasbourg in 1994 to study art, then moving to Paris in 1997. She was awarded citizenship in 2006, and lived there until her passing this past June. In 2025, the French government announced she was to receive the country’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, but she declined. Though she was clear to say she meant no disrespect, she explained, “I can’t ignore what I see as a hypocritical attitude towards Iran. I can’t continue seeing the children of Iranian oligarchs come to spend their holidays in France, even become naturalized, while at the same time young dissidents have difficulty in obtaining a tourist visa to come to see what the country of the enlightenment and human rights looks like.”
WHY WE CHOSE HER
As you can see by the powerful way in which she stood for freedom and individual artistic expression, the death of this powerful, inspired and inspiring artist is a loss to the world. Her work speaks for her, and will live on, continuing to make a difference to how everyday Iranians, especially Iranian women, are seen by the rest of the world. In a time when some members of US government are advocating for Christian nationalism, arguably another version of Iran’s theocratic totalitarian government, her art and life are an inspiration, and the experiences represented in Persepolis and Women, Life, Freedom important cautionary tales. — Leslie Combemale
