Marjane Satrapi grew up wearing sneakers and beating up boys. She wanted to grow up to be a saint. When she was ten years old, her world changed overnight. Girls and boys had to use different doors to enter the school. She had to cover herself with a long dark robe. Grownups around her began to disappear. Marjane has several close encounters with the country’s morality police and her teachers at school. Iraqi bombs fall on the street where she lives. Eventually her parents send her abroad to receive a European education, but she is miserable: she loves her family and country, despite their flaws, too much to stay away for long. After a brief return and a failed marriage, Marjane leaves Iran for good.
This is a heartbreaking true story of a childhood coinciding with regime change and war in Iran. It’s a story that everyone who counts themselves as a human being should read or watch.
Tehran 1978: An eight year old Marjane, dreams of being a future prophet, intent on saving the world. Cherished by her modern and cultivated parents and adored by her grandmother, she avidly follows the events that lead to the downfall of the Shah’s brutal regime.
The introduction of the new Islamic Republic heralds the era of the ‘Guardians of the Revolution’ who control how people should dress and act. Marjane, who must now wear the veil, dreams of being a revolutionary.
Soon after, the city is bombarded in the war against Iraq. With the deprivations brought on by the conflict and the routine disappearances of family members and loved ones, the daily repression becomes more severe each day.
As her environment becomes increasingly dangerous, Marjane’s rebelliousness poses a serious problem. Her parents decide to send her to Austria for her own protection.
In Vienna, 14 year old Marjane experiences another kind of revolution: adolescence, freedom and the dizzy heights of love but also with this excitement comes exile, loneliness and the bitter taste of life as an outcast. (Cannes)
Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the Lycee Francais before leaving for Vienna and then going to Strasbourg to study illustration. She currently lives in Paris, where she is at work on the sequel to Persepolis and where her illustrations appear regularly in newspapers and magazines. She is also the author of several children’s books.