PARIS (AP) — Acclaimed Iranian-French cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, a prominent advocate for women’s rights, has died at 56, the French presidency said Thursday.
“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure of French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the French presidency said in a statement.
President Emmanuel Macron and his wife “pay tribute to a remarkable artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable,” the statement said.
News broadcaster BFM TV and other French media reported Satrapi has “died of sadness” a little over a year after the death of her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Mattias Ripa, according to a statement from people close to the artist.
The French Academy of Fine Arts, of which she was a member, expressed its deep sadness in a social media statement, paying tribute to “a passionate advocate for cinema and film education” who earlier this year created a foundation to help international students come to Paris to study film.
Satrapi is best-known for her monochrome autobiographical comic book and film “Persepolis,” a coming-of-age tale set against the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran.
“Persepolis” won the Film Critics Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 2007 and the César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2008, in addition to being nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Oscars.
The film, which details her life in Tehran as the willful daughter of intellectual Marxists, is a reminder that Iranians are just like everyone else, Satrapi told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview in Cannes.
“What we wanted to say is, if these people scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories,” she said.
Iranian authorities at the time protested the movie’s inclusion at Cannes, sending a letter to the French Embassy in Tehran.
Satrapi was born on Nov. 22, 1969, in Rasht, Iran, but her parents sent her to Vienna, Austria, in 1983 to finish her studies because of the extremism in their country following the 1979 Revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
But Satrapi, who found Austria hostile and who desperately missed her parents, returned to Iran in 1989 to attend Tehran University, where she earned a degree in visual communications.
By the time she graduated, Satrapi decided she finally was ready to leave Iran and accept the opportunities her parents had been so desperate to give her a decade before. In 1994 she moved to France. She studied in Strasbourg and later moved to Paris.
Her graphic novels also include “Broderies” (“Embroideries”) and “Poulet aux prunes” (“Chicken with plums”), which also was adapted into a film. As a filmmaker, she has directed several works including “La Bande des Jotas” (“The Gang of Jotas”) and “Radioactive” (“Madame Curie”), a biography about the Polish physicist Marie Curie.
Satrapi in 2023 coordinated the book “Femme, vie, liberté” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”) together with a group of artists and academics to illustrate the revolts that occurred in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 at the hands of the so-called “morality police.” The work denounces the repression and lack of human rights that Iranian society, especially women, suffers at the hands of the Iranian regime, the foundation said.
Satrapi was elected member of the French Academy of Fine Arts in 2024. She also was offered France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, that same year but declined it, arguing France was not doing enough to support Iranian people fighting for democracy.
“Supporting the women’s revolution in Iran cannot be reduced to photos or speeches,” she wrote in a January 2025 letter to French authorities. “When people are fighting for democracy, we should support them.”
In 2024, Satrapi won the Princess of Asturias Foundation award in Spain for communication and humanities. The organization said she was “an essential voice in the defense of human rights and freedom.” The judges described her as “a symbol of civic engagement led by women.”
Satrapi’s husband died in April 2025 at 53. On her Instagram page, only one message was left in a series of posts: “Because I have lost the love of my life.”