Marjane Satrapi, ‘Persepolis’ Director, Dies at 56
French-Iranian graphic novelist, artist, and film director Marjane Satrapi, best known for co-writing and co-directing the animated film Persepolis, has died at age 56, ARTnews reported. Her family told AFP that she “died of sadness” a little over a year after the death of her husband, Swedish producer and screenwriter Mattias Ripa, who died on 8 April 2025. Persepolis premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Jury Prize, later earned an Oscar nomination for best animated feature (making Satrapi the first woman nominated in that category), and drew more than one million admissions in France; it also won best first film at the César Awards. Satrapi’s later films included Chicken With Plums (2011, with Vincent Paronnaud), The Voices (2014), Radioactive (2019), and Dear Paris (Paradis Paris), which premiered at the Torino Film Festival in 2024.
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This story was covered in Biennial Blowups and Gallery Model Meltdowns