Morgana COCHAUX

Communication and Events Officer

by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
France and United States, 2007

“Freedom has a price”. It is on this bittersweet line that Persepolis ends, reflecting well the coming-of-age story of an Iranian girl who, against the backdrop of a country in turmoil, simply wants to grow up and ‘be a normal teenager’.

Adapted from the eponymous autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who died in early June this year, the film received widespread critical acclaim and prestigious awards, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize and an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. The cartoon uses mostly black-and-white and minimalist hand-drawn animation. This style captures, with poetry and creativity, Satrapi’s childhood in a country gripped by violence.

Raised by left-wing intellectual parents who nurtured her curiosity and independent spirit, young Satrapi grows into a witty, irrepressibly inquisitive child, forever questioning and probing the world around her. She comes of age during the fall of the shah’s dictatorship and the brief moment of hope that follows the revolution, only to watch that promise dissolve into the rule of the mullahs, with profound consequences for her family and countless others.

As the regime grows steadily more oppressive, her sharp tongue, independent mind and hunger for freedom put a target on her back, and she is sent away to Europe for protection. There, she finds a freedom that is double-edged: liberating in its opportunities for self-discovery, particularly as a young woman, and in its access to everything once forbidden; painful in the loneliness and alienation that accompany exile. Caught between a country she cannot bear to be in and her homeland that will not accept her, she is drawn home by love for her family, only to discover she has fully outgrown the narrow space the regime allows its people, especially its women. There is no fitting back in. 

Satrapi does not shy away from the hardships she lived through, which could easily have made the film bleak and heavy to watch. Instead, she turns it into everything the regime tried to crush: a creative, warm and witty celebration of freedom, however bitter it can feel. It is, too, a tribute to the women who shaped her life: her mother, who never softened the truth and nurtured her daughter’s defiant spirit, and, above all, her grandmother, who anchored her sense of self and kept her grounded – notably through her delicious sense of humour. Persepolis stands as the powerful legacy left behind by Satrapi, a work whose message still resonates strongly today as the Iranian regime maintains its tight grip on women’s hopes for freedom.