Marjane Satrapi, the acclaimed French-Iranian artist, author, and filmmaker behind the graphic novel Persepolis, has died at age 56. The French government announced the beloved creative’s passing and members of her close circle told news agency AFP that Satrapi “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life”.
Born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969, Satrapi moved to Tehran with her family when she was less than a month old. Growing up in an intellectual and politically involved family, she was only a young girl when the Islamic Revolution led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. While her family supported her liberal views, they grew concerned after having seen many of her relatives and friends be persecuted, arrested, and murdered by the authorities.
At age 14, Satrapi was sent to Europe to continue her education. Following a near deadly bout of bronchitis, she returned to Tehran, where she obtained a master’s degree in visual communication from the Islamic Azad University. She would return to Europe and settle permanently in France in 1994.
In 2000, Satrapi published the first volume of Persepolis, an autobiographical graphic novel about her upbringing in the face of political changes in Iran, as well as trying to find her footing in Europe. She said in a 2024 interview that the book’s mission was to make readers reflect and realize: “Oh, they’re actually human beings like us.”
While Persepolis made her become a star in the realm of graphic novels, she always preferred the term “comic” to describe her craft. “People are so afraid to say the word ‘comic,’ ” she wrote for The Guardian. “It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail, and a big belly. Change it to graphic novel and that disappears. No: it’s all comics.”
Satrapi went on to co-direct the animated film adaptation of Persepolis, which was released in 2007. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, earning Satrapi the title of the first woman to be nominated in that category. She directed five more feature films, including Chicken with Plums (2011), a live-action adaptation of her graphic novel of the same name, and Radioactive (2019), about the life of Marie Curie.
Throughout her life, Satrapi continued to be a devoted activist. In 2022, she showed her support for the young people protesting the death of Mahsa Amini. A year later, she joined a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Paris to protest the arrest of five Tehran teenagers for posting a TikTok video dancing. In 2024, she put together the book Woman, Life, Freedom, featuring the work of more than 20 artists, activists, journalists, and academics.
Following the death of her husband in 2025, Satrapi removed all content from her personal Instagram page, leaving only images that make up the phrase “For I Lost the love of my life.” She then announced the creation of the Mattias and Marjane Ripa-Satrapi Cinema Foundation, which aims to support foreign students who want to study filmmaking in Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron lamented her passing, saying that he and his wife “pay tribute to a great artist who transformed her Iranian childhood into a universal fable,” per his office. “With her childlike perspective, her irony, her tenderness, and her inner demons, the author created a deeply moving world with which readers identified,” they added.
Fellow authors, such as Margaret Atwood, have also mourned the passing of Satrapi. “I was saddened to hear of the death of Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis made a huge impact. It depicts the same kinds of struggles—but in real life—that the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments undergo,” Atwood told The Guardian. “The repression of ordinary women in a theocratic regime, the secret rebellions, the depression, the courage scraped up to carry on; but I only wrote about it, while Marjane Satrapi lived it. Right now, with Iran in the midst of yet another war and control over the population intense, her work is more pertinent than ever.”
Acclaimed French-Iranian artist, author, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi has died at the age of 56.
She is best known as the world-renowned creator of the graphic novel Persepolis and its animated feature film by the same name.
Sources: Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis and acclaimed French-Iranian artist, dies aged 56; Oscar-nominated Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi dies aged 56; How to film a graphic novel; ‘The little girl in Persepolis has grown up’: Marjane Satrapi on life after her hit graphic novel – and her radical new work
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