“Marjane Satrapi has died of sadness just over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” indicates a statement from her relatives transmitted to AFP. The producer, actor, and screenwriter Mattias Ripa died on April 8, 2025, at the age of 53. The couple had been together for 31 years.
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Exiled in France since 1994 and naturalized French in 2006, the cartoonist Marjane Satrapi achieved success with the autobiographical saga Persepolis, in which she narrated her childhood in Iran under the yoke of the mullahs, the repression suffered by the Iranian people, and her painful departure to Europe.
Awarded in 2001 at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the first part was followed by three others and brought to the big screen by Marjane Satrapi in 2007, with Vincent Paronnaud as co-director, winning the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. “Although this film is universal, I want to dedicate it to all Iranians,” declared Marjane Satrapi at the time, who, even in recent years, has denounced the actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In 2005, another of her albums set in Iran, Chicken with Plums, won the award for best album in Angoulême, and Marjane Satrapi also co-directed its film adaptation in 2011, with a cast consisting of Mathieu Amalric, Edouard Baer, and Maria de Medeiros.
A staunch opponent of the Tehran authorities, Satrapi rejected the French Legion of Honor in 2025 to denounce “France’s hypocritical attitude towards Iran,” which was then experiencing a new wave of repression.
“For a long time, I have found it very difficult to understand France’s policy towards Iran,” she had explained on Instagram, lamenting that “freedom-loving young Iranians, dissidents, and artists are denied visas.” “The rejection of the Legion of Honor is by no means an action or a thought against France. On the contrary, I deeply love this country, which is mine,” she had clarified.
Her Instagram account reflected the pain caused by the loss of her husband in 2025. Spread across several posts, a message thus proclaimed: “I lost the love of my life” (“I lost the love of my life”).
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