Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian author, illustrator and film director behind “Persepolis,” has died. She was 56.
The acclaimed artist “died of sadness,” her family told the Agence France-Presse news agency. An indication that she might have taken her own life.
The statement further elaborated that Satrapi had “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” AFP reported. Ripa, a Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter, died in April of last year.
Satrapi’s “Persepolis,” which she later adapted into a superb Oscar-nominated animated film, recounted her early years growing up in Tehran against the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution before being sent to Europe by her parents. The film screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.
Through stark black-and-white, and a candid, often humorous narrative voice, she challenged stereotypes about Iran while illuminating the experiences of a generation shaped by political upheaval, exile and cultural displacement.
Satrapi also directed 2014’s “The Voices,” starring Ryan Reynolds, an eccentric pitch black comedy that embraced its own bizarre identity. The film followed a factory worker with schizophrenia whose hallucinations propel him toward murder, accompanied by running conversations with his talking pets and the severed heads of his victims.
Whether working in comics, or film, Satrapi was fearless in her art. “Persepolis” will be her legacy, and given the current geopolitical tensions, feels more relevant than ever.