Маржан Сатрапи: Ирандық суретші, режиссер және қаламгердің өмірі мен шығармалары

Iranian French graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children's book author

Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children's book author. Her best known works include the graphic novel Persepolis and its film adaptation, the graphic novel Chicken with Plums, Woman, Life, Freedom and the Marie Curie biopic Radioactive.

Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran in an upper middle class Iranian family and attended the French language school Lycée Razi. Both her parents were politically active and supported leftist causes against the monarchy of the last Shah. Her maternal great grandfather, Nasser al Din Shah, was the Persian emperor from 1848 to 1896. She stayed in Vienna through her high school years, often moving from one residence to another as situations changed, and sometimes stayed at friends' homes. Eventually, she was homeless and lived on the streets for three months, until she was hospitalized for an almost deadly bout of bronchitis. Upon recovery, she returned to Iran. She studied visual communication, eventually obtaining a master's degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran. Satrapi then married Reza, a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War, when she was 21, whom she later divorced. She then moved to Strasbourg, France, to study at the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR). Her parents told her that Iran was no longer the place for her, and encouraged her to stay in Europe permanently. Satrapi is currently married to Mattias Ripa, a Swedish national. They live in Paris.

Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels, originally published in French in four parts in 2000–2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. In 2013, Chicago schools were ordered by the district to remove Persepolis from classrooms because of the work's graphic language and violence. This banning incited protests and controversy. Her later publication, Embroideries (Broderies), was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award that her graphic novel Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes) won. She has also contributed to the Op Ed section of The New York Times. ComicsAlliance listed Satrapi as one of 12 women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition. Satrapi prefers the term "comic books" to "graphic novels." "People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'," she told the Guardian newspaper in 2011. "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."

Persepolis was adapted into an animated film of the same name. It debuted at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 and shared a Special Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light (Luz silenciosa). Co written and co directed by Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud, the French language picture stars the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, and Simon Abkarian. The English version, starring the voices of Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn, and Iggy Pop, was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards in January 2008. Satrapi was the first woman to be nominated for the award. However, the Iranian government denounced the film and got it dropped from the Bangkok International Film Festival. Otherwise, Persepolis was a very successful film both commercially (with over a million admissions in France alone) as well as critically, winning Best First Film at the César Awards 2008. The film reflects many tendencies of first time filmmaking in France (which makes up around 40% of all French cinema each year), notably in its focus on very intimate rites of passage, and quite ambivalently recounted coming of age moments. Satrapi and Paronnaud continued their successful collaboration with a second film, a live action adaptation of Chicken with Plums, released in late 2011. In 2012, Satrapi directed and acted in the comedy crime film Gang of the Jotas, from her own screenplay. In 2014 Satrapi directed the comedy horror film The Voices, from a screenplay by Michael R. Perry. In 2019, Satrapi directed a biopic of two time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, titled Radioactive.

Following the Iranian elections in June 2009, Satrapi and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before Green Party members in the European Parliament to present a document allegedly received from a member of the Iranian electoral commission claiming that the reform candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, had actually won the election, and that the conservative incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had received only 12% of the vote. In 2022 she voiced her support for the Mahsa Amini protests.