Marjane Satrapi (Racht, Iran, 1969), author of the graphic novel phenomenon Persepolis and filmmaker, has died in Paris at the age of 56, according to the French press, which cites a statement sent by the family to the AFP agency. “Marjane Satrapi died of sadness just over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” the text reads. Ripa, actor, screenwriter and producer, died in April 2025 at age 53. On his Instagram account there are several posts in which you can read “I lost the love of my life” (I have lost the love of my life).
Born in Rasht, Iran, Satrapi settled in France in 1994. She left her country to study in Europe because her parents wanted her to educate herself away from the oppression of the regime. Persepolisa cult comic and his best-known work, tells of his childhood in Tehran and the changes in Iran after the overthrow of the Shah of Persia in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. In Paris he met Ripa, during a university exchange, whom he married in 1996 in Stockholm. Since then he accompanied her in all her projects. Last February, Satrapi created the Mattias and Marjane Ripa-Satrapi Film Foundation to support foreign students.
Frederic SOULOY (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON (EFE)
She had barely any experience, apart from having spent a short time at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg, when Satrapi built her masterpiece, which was published in 2000. She believed that she would never find a publisher, that everything would end up in photocopies for her friends. “When I was a student, one thing was clear: I was going to be poor. I would live in an attic, I would always eat pasta and I would never go on a trip, but I would work in what I liked. With Persepolis, “I didn’t even think I would find an editor,” he noted in an interview with EL PAIS. It became a milestone for comics “only comparable to the Maus by Art Spiegelman”, according to Reservoir Books, the publisher that publishes it in Spanish, Basque and Catalan.
Satrapi’s family, wealthy and progressive, initially sympathized with the revolution, but when it was dominated by Islamist sectors it led to a theocratic regime that restricted individual freedoms and embarked on a war with Iraq in 1980, under the surveillance of the Guardians of the Revolution.
The comic was adapted to film, with Vincent Paronnaud, and was presented in 2007 at the Cannes Festival, where it won the grand jury prize. In addition, it was the first nomination for a female creator for best animated film in Oscar history. Later, he filmed The Jotas gang y The Voicesa road movie about a murderer in the United States.
“Drawing is the first expression of the human being, prior to writing,” said the author about the choice of comic. Among his graphic novels, there are also Embroidery, which tells the lives of Iranian women, and Chicken with plums, about the last eight days of the life of a relative of Satrapi named Nasser Ali, a well-known player of tar, the traditional Iranian lute. With this book he won the award for best work at the Angoulême comic festival and was also adapted to film.
With a strong personality and a chain smoker (she had smoked since she was 13), she hated having her photo taken, she did not mince words and she defended freedom above all, to the point of supporting the freedom that women have to wear or not wear one of the things she hated the most: the Islamic veil. “As I consider that human rights are superior to my personal point of view, I will fight so that these women can wear the veil, even though I hate it,” she told this newspaper..
She always dressed in dark clothes, like her famous comic, published in black and white: “It is not the idea of mourning, in the comic the important thing is the script. I already have a complex story and if the drawing is too busy, it is overwhelming. In addition, The Association, which published me, only made comics in black and white for economic reasons,” said the artist about the origins of Persepolis.
For many years Marjani Satrapi left the comic, until in 2023 she coordinated Women. Life. Freedomwith Iranian authors and where it brought together stars like Paco Roca and Joan Sfarr — a kind of “international comic brigade,” in its definition. The book tells of the revolution that began after the death in 2022 of Masha Amini, murdered by the police for not wearing her veil properly. He had also recently filmed Paris Paradiswith the Spanish Rossy de Palma.
In 2024 she received the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The jury defined Satrapi as “a symbol of civic commitment led by women”, described her as “one of the most influential people in the dialogue between cultures and generations” and recalled that in “Persepolis “It exemplarily reflects the search for a more just and inclusive world.” And she, in a press conference via videoconference, dedicated the award to the fight for freedom in her country and to the rapper Toomaj Salehi, sentenced to death days ago: “He is the voice of the entire country.”
In 2025 he rejected the Legion of Honor in France for “a matter of principle.” “I cannot ignore what I considered a hypocritical attitude on the part of France towards Iran,” he said. “It is very difficult for me to understand France’s policy towards Iran,” he said, criticizing the fact that visas are denied to young Iranians “who love freedom, while the children of Iranian oligarchs walk through Paris as if it were Saint-Tropez without any problem.”
“I sold millions and I don’t know how many hundreds of conferences I gave. Did I change anything? What do I know? Did I arouse people’s curiosity? Yes. I contributed a little. Just a little, although that’s the only way to change the world,” he reflected in EL PAÍS.
The death of the young Mahsa Amini at the hands of the regime, in 2022, and after 23 years without setting foot in Iran, changed her expectations about a possible return to her country. Until that moment, she doubted that he would return and had made a will saying that she would be buried there. But that event changed his perspective: “Now I know that I will return,” he hoped to make it alive in this newspaper.
In a statement from the Elysée, French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the disappearance of “a key figure in French culture and an artist deeply committed to freedom, whose work conveyed a universal message. She was a great artist who transformed Iranian childhood into a universal fable.”