French-Iranian artist, filmmaker and writer Marjane Satrapi (Rasht, Iran, 1969), author of the comic and the film Persepolis, was distinguished this Tuesday with the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. With one of the most prestigious distinctions in the Hispanic world, the Oviedo-based foundation wanted to celebrate “the essential role [de Marjane Satrapi] in defense of human rights and freedom”.
In the statement announcing the award, cited by the Spanish daily The world, the Princess of Asturias Foundation says Satrapi “is a symbol of women-led civic engagement.” And he adds: “Thanks to her audacity and artistic production, she is considered one of the most influential personalities in the dialogue between cultures and generations”; and the award aims to “highlight Marjane Satrapi’s talent for reinventing the relationships between art and communication, as in her graphic novel Persepolisin which it illustrates in an exemplary way the search for a fairer and more integrative world”.
The illustrator and director was grateful for the distinction, considering that “all the young people who lost their lives and those who continue to fight for freedom in Iran are honored”, she says, quoted by the Spanish daily. Stating, “without false modesty”, that he does not know whether what he did for humanity will be “that remarkable”, Satrapi dedicated the Princess of Asturias Award to rapper his compatriot Toomaj Salehi, who a few days ago “was sentenced to death for singing about freedom”, highlighted.
Drawn autobiography
Persepolis is, in fact, the best-known title in this author’s already vast work. At the beginning of the millennium, it was the title of her autobiography, published in France in 4 comic volumes, between 2000 and 2003 (revelation author award at the Angoulême Comics Festival). In 2003, it also began to be published in Portugal, with the first two volumes translated by Miguel Fezas Vital for the Polvo edition; the next two volumes would come out in 2012 and 2015, respectively with the seals of Contraponto and Bertrand, and translated by Duarte Sousa Tavares).
In 2007, Persepolis became an animated film, designed by Vincent Paronnaud, earning the authors that year the Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival and, in 2008, a César for best adapted screenplay, in addition to an Oscar nomination, making Satrapi became the first woman to be cited by the Hollywood Academy in the category of best animated feature film.
Persepoli (2007), directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
DR
About Persepolisan autobiographical account of the author’s childhood and adolescence lived in Tehran, at the time of the Islamic Revolution promoted by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, the Princess of Asturias Foundation says that “few works have had such an ability to penetrate pop culture and, at the same time, , to be one of the best historical accounts of our time.”
At the time she embarked on this adventure, at the turn of the century, young Marjane was already living in exile in Europe, where her parents had sent her to free herself from the censorship and conditioning of life in her homeland.
In 1983, he had settled in Vienna, where he studied at the French Lyceum. He returned to Tehran to study at the School of Fine Arts, but, in 1994, he definitively left Iran and settled in France: first, attending the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg; then in Paris, the city where he stayed to live and work.
In her work as a comic book author, the albums Broderies (2003; Embroideryin the Portuguese edition, by Levoir/PÚBLICO,) and Poulet aux Prunes (2004; Chicken with Plums, in the Portuguese edition Levoir/PÚBLICO, 2019, translated by Pedro Cleto). In 2011, Satrapi also adapted this album into a film, again with Vincent Paronnaud. More recently, following the death, in September 2022, of the young Mahsa Amini, at the hands of Iran’s “customs police”, she coordinated the publication of the book Femme, Vie, Liberté (2023), a collective work by a kind of “international comics brigade”, including his compatriots Farid Vahi and Abbas Milani.
In cinema, he signed, among others, The Voices (2014) and Radioactive (2019), currently having the feature film in post-production Paris Paradisannounced as a dark comedy on the subject of death, and which features actors such as Monica Bellucci, Rossy de Palma or André Dussolier.
The Princess of Asturias Award will be awarded in October; In each of its categories, the winner receives a sculpture by Joan Miró, a diploma and 50 thousand euros.
