PARIS (AP) — Renowned Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, a prominent women's rights advocate, has died at age 56, the French presidential press service said Thursday.
«"Her death marks the loss of an outstanding figure in French culture and an artist dedicated to freedom, whose works carried a universal message and brought her enormous international recognition," the French presidential administration said in a statement.
The statement said President Emmanuel Macron and his wife "pay tribute to the extraordinary artist who transformed Iranian childhood into a universal parable.".
BFM TV and other French media reported that Satrapi "died of grief" just over a year after the death of her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Matthias Ripa, according to people close to the artist.
The French Academy of Fine Arts, of which she was a member, expressed deep sorrow in a statement on social media, paying tribute to the "passionate supporter of cinema and film education" who earlier this year created a fund to help foreign students come to Paris to study film.
Satrapi is best known for her black-and-white autobiographical comic book and film Persepolis, a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran.
«Persepolis won the Grand Prix de la Film Critics at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2008, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2008.
The film, which details her life in Tehran as the wayward daughter of Marxist intellectuals, is a reminder that Iranians are no different from anyone else, Satrapi told The Associated Press in Cannes in 2007.
«"What we wanted to say is, if these people scare you, take a closer look: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories," she said.
At the time, Iranian authorities protested the film's inclusion in the Cannes Film Festival program by sending a letter to the French embassy in Tehran.
Satrapi was born on November 22, 1969, in Rasht, Iran, but in 1983 her parents sent her to Vienna, Austria, to finish her studies due to extremism in the country following the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
But Satrapi, who faced hostility from Austria and greatly missed her parents, returned to Iran in 1989 to enroll at Tehran University, where she earned a degree in visual communications.
By the time she graduated from university, Satrapi decided she was finally ready to leave Iran and pursue the opportunities her parents had so desperately wanted for her ten years earlier. In 1994, she moved to France. She studied in Strasbourg and later moved to Paris.
Her graphic novels also include "Embroideries" and "Hen with Plums," which was also made into a film. As a film director, she has made several works, including "The Žota Gang" and "Radioactive" ("Madame Curie"), a biography of the Polish physicist Marie Curie.
In 2023, Satrapi, together with a group of artists and scholars, published the book "Femme, vie, liberté" ("Woman, Life, Freedom"), which illustrates the uprisings that erupted in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 at the hands of the so-called "morality police." According to the foundation's statement, the work condemns the repression and human rights violations suffered by Iranian society, particularly women, at the hands of the Iranian regime.
In 2024, Satrapi was elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts. That same year, she was also offered France's highest award, the Legion of Honor, but she declined, citing France's insufficient support for the Iranian people's struggle for democracy.
«"Support for the women's revolution in Iran cannot be limited to photographs or speeches," she wrote in a letter to French authorities in January 2025. "When people fight for democracy, we must support them.".
In 2024, Satrapi received the Princess of Asturias Foundation Prize in Spain for Communications and Humanities. The organization declared her a "pivotal voice in the defense of human rights and freedoms." The judges described her as "a symbol of civic activism led by women.".
Satrapi's husband died in April 2025 at the age of 53. Her Instagram page, in a series of posts, contained only one message: "Because I lost the love of my life.".