Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French artist and Oscar-nominated director best known for her 2007 animated feature Persepolis, has passed away.
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According to The New York Times, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced her death in a statement on Thursday.
The statement did not specify where, when, or how the 56-year-old died.
“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the statement read.
RIP Marjane Satrapi, the great cartoonist and film director, best known for PERSEPOLIS. She was only 56. A great talent. She will be missed. pic.twitter.com/fcEwcTXVMs
— Vincent Alexander (@NonsenseIsland) June 4, 2026
“Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” read a separate statement from close friends and family via the BBC. Her husband, producer and screenwriter Mattias Ripa, died on April 8, 2025.
Iranian-born Satrapi lived in France since the early 1990s. Her parents had sent her to Europe as a teenager to escape the restrictions of the Islamic Republic regime.
Born in Rasht, Iran, on Nov. 22, 1969, Satrapi grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Tehran and attended the French lycée. Her parents were politically active, opposing both the Shah and the subsequent Islamic Republic.
Satrapi was nine when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. She recounted her experience growing up under his government in the graphic novel Persepolis.
Marjane Satrapi Turns to Filmmaking
In 2007, she adapted the graphic novel into an animated feature film, co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud. The film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature in 2008.
Remembering the brilliant Marjane Satrapi, the extraordinary artist and filmmaker behind Persepolis.
— StudiocanalUK (@StudiocanalUK) June 4, 2026
Through this deeply personal and powerful film, she gave audiences a story of identity, freedom, exile and resistance that continues to resonate across the world. pic.twitter.com/NkekRpJi6H
Satrapi and Paronnaud teamed up again for Chicken with Plums, which premiered in Venice in 2011. Adapted from her graphic novel, it tells the story of a musician whose life falls apart after his wife breaks his violin. Satrapi then directed and starred in the 2012 crime-comedy Gang of the Jotas, which centers on an airport baggage mix-up.
Satrapi then directed the 2014 comedy The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds and Gemma Arterton. Her next film was the 2019 biopic Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie.
Her most recent film was the 2024 dark comedy Dear Paris, featuring Monica Bellucci, Roschdy Zem, Alex Lutz and André Dussollier.