Persepolis (film)

At the Paris-Orly Airport in France, an Iranian woman, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi, looks at the flight schedule; her eyes come to rest on a listing bound for Tehran. She then takes a seat, smokes a cigarette, and reflects on her childhood.

Marji grew up in Tehran, wanted to be a prophet, and was a big fan of Bruce Lee. When the 1979 Iranian revolution against the Shah of Iran begins, her middle-class family is thrilled and participates in the rallies, but Marji is forbidden to attend. One day, Marji's uncle Anoosh arrives to have dinner with the family after being released from a nine-year prison sentence, inspiring Marji with his stories of his life on the run from the government.

The Shah is deposed and elections for a new leading power commence. Marji's family's situation does not improve, in spite of Anoosh's optimism, and they are profoundly upset when Islamic fundamentalists win the elections and start repressing Iranian society, imposing strict Islamic law. The government forces women to dress modestly and wear headscarves, and Anoosh is rearrested and executed for his political beliefs, as are other political dissenters Marji knows. Many of the family's friends, as well as thousands of Iranians, flee to Europe or the USA.

Profoundly disillusioned, Marji tries, with her family, to adapt to life under the new regime. The Iran–Iraq War breaks out and Marji sees for herself the horrors of death and destruction. The Iranian government begins implementing laws that create blatant injustices and cut down even more on social freedoms. Later, one of her uncles, Taher, has a heart attack. He needs open-heart surgery, and since Iran does not have the equipment, he must go to England. But since the borders are closed, only very sick people approved by the Board of Health can leave. When Marji's aunt attempts to get permission, she finds that the hospital director she must deal with is her former window-washer, who is incompetent and totally submissive to his religion.

Marji and her father go to see Khosro, a man who prints fake passports and promises to make the passport in a week. Khosro is sheltering Niloufar, an 18-year-old relative wanted for her Communist beliefs, to whom Marji takes an instant liking. Later, Niloufar is spotted and promptly arrested and executed; Khosro's house is ransacked in the process, and he flees without making the passport. Marji watches as her uncle dies from his heart problems, and the family tries to find solace in secret parties where they enjoy simple pleasures the government has outlawed, including alcohol.

As she grows up, an overconfident Marji refuses to stay out of trouble, secretly buying Western heavy metal music, notably Iron Maiden, on the black market, wearing unorthodox clothing such as denim jackets, and celebrating punk rock and other Western music sensations like Michael Jackson. She is nearly taken into custody by female Guardians of the Revolution but escapes by lying. Marji is expelled from school when she openly rebuts a teacher's lies about government abuses.

Fearing her arrest for her outspokenness, Marji's parents send her to a French lycée in Vienna, Austria. She lives with Catholic nuns and is upset by their discriminatory and judgmental behavior. Marji makes few friends and ultimately feels intolerably isolated in a foreign land surrounded by annoyingly superficial people who take their freedom for granted and view her with open disdain. As the years go by, she is thrown out of her shelter for insulting a nun, and moves between houses until she rents a room from Dr. Frau Schloss, an unstable former philosophy teacher.

One night, her grandmother's voice resonates, telling her to stay true to herself as she leaves a party after lying to an acquaintance that she is French. Her would-be lover reveals his homosexuality after a failed attempt at sex with Marji. She engages in a passionate love affair with Markus, a debonair native, which ends badly when she discovers him cheating on her. Schloss then accuses Marji of stealing her brooch, and Marji finally leaves. She spends the day on a park bench, reflecting upon how "stupid" she has been, and realizes she has nowhere else left to go. After living on the street for a few months, she contracts bronchitis and almost dies.

Marji awakens in a Viennese hospital and returns to Iran with her family's permission, hoping that the end of the war will improve their quality of life. After spending several days watching television, Marji falls into clinical depression. She attempts suicide by overdosing on medication. She falls asleep and dreams that God and Karl Marx remind her what is important and encourage her to live. Her determination is renewed and she attends university classes and parties and enters into a relationship with a fellow student, Reza.

Iranian society is more tyrannical than ever with mass executions for political beliefs and petty religious absurdities now common. Marji and Reza are caught holding hands and their parents are forced to pay a fine to avoid their lashing, so Marji resorts to survival tactics to protect herself, such as falsely accusing a man of insulting her to avoid being arrested for wearing makeup and marrying Reza to avoid scrutiny. Her grandmother is disappointed by Marji's behavior and berates her, telling her that both her grandfather and her uncle died supporting freedom and innocent people and that she should never forsake them or her family by sacrificing her integrity. Realizing her mistake, Marji delivers a speech during a class at the university, and her grandmother is pleased to hear that she openly confronted the blatantly sexist double standard in her university's forum on public morality.

The fundamentalist police discover and raid a party Marji is attending. While the women are detained (having just barely managed to cover themselves up, they avoid punishment), the men escape across the rooftops. One of them, Nima, hesitates before jumping, consequently falling to his death. After Nima's death and her divorce, Marji leaves Iran permanently to avoid being targeted by the Iranian authorities as a political dissident. Before leaving, she takes a trip to the Caspian Sea with her grandmother and visits the graves of her grandfather and uncle. Marji's mother forbids her to return, and Marji agrees. Her grandmother dies soon after her departure.

Marji collects her luggage and gets into a taxi. As the taxi drives away from the airport, the narrative returns to the present. The driver asks Marjane where she is from and she replies "Iran", keeping the promise she made to Anoosh and her grandmother that she would remember where she came from and always stay true to herself. She recalls her final memory of her grandmother telling her how she placed jasmine in her brassiere to smell lovely every day.

The film is presented in the black-and-white style of the original graphic novels. Satrapi explains in a bonus feature on the DVD that this was so the place and the characters wouldn't look like foreigners in a foreign country but simply people in a country to show how easily a country can become like Iran. The present-day scenes are shown in color, while sections of the historic narrative resemble a shadow theater show. The design was created by art director and executive producer Marc Jousset. The animation is credited to the Perseprod studio and was created by two specialized studios, Je Suis Bien Content and Pumpkin 3D.

• Chiara Mastroianni as Marjane
• Catherine Deneuve as Mother

French version

• Gabriele Lopes as child Marjane
• Danielle Darrieux as Grandmother
• Simon Abkarian as Father
• François Jerosme as Uncle Anoush

English version

• Amethyste Frezignac as child Marjane
• Gena Rowlands as Grandmother
• Sean Penn as Father
• Iggy Pop as Uncle Anoush
• Mathilde Merlot as Tina / First Voice

Directed by Christian Desmares, the film was produced by a total of twenty animators. Initially opposed to producing an animated movie due to the high level of difficulty, producers Marc-Antoine Robert and Xavier Regault gave protagonist, Marjane Satrapi, alternative options of film production to avoid animation. As admitted by producer Robert, "I know the new generation of French comic book artists quite well, and I'm afraid of Marjane's. I offered to write an original script for her, because I didn't want to work on an animated movie at all...I knew how complicated it was".[6] And yet, despite the difficulty, the producers followed through with Satrapi's wishes and focused on interpreting her life story as depicted in her novel Persepolis, ""With live-action, it would have turned into a story of people living in a distant land who don't look like us," Satrapi says. "At best, it would have been an exotic story, and at worst, a 'third-world' story".[6]

The animation team worked alongside Satrapi to gain a detailed understanding of the types of graphic images she deemed necessary for accuracy. Following her guidelines, the animators, such as interviewee Marc Jousset, commented on their use of the "tradition animation techniques" Satrapi requested to keep the drawings simple and avoid the "more high-tech techniques" that "would look dated".[7] Satrapi's vision, according to Jousset, involved a lot of focus on the characters' natural, humane physical imperfections.

During their initial stages of production, the animation team attempted to use 2D image techniques "on pen tablets," but were immediately unsatisfied with the product due to the lack of definition, Jousset has said.[7] Applying traditional techniques as simple as paper and ink to the production allowed Satrapi to use methods she was familiar with. As a result, Satrapi crafted an image depiction she, herself, would recognize as her own work, and thus, her own story. "It was clear that a traditional animation technique was perfectly suited to Marjane's and Vincent's idea of the film".[7]

Choosing black and white as the film's dominant colors was an intentional choice by Satrapi, along with the director and animation team, to continue on the path of traditional animation techniques. Despite its simplicity, members of the animation team such as Jousset discussed how black and white makes imperfections more obvious: "Using only black and white in an animation movie requires a great deal of discipline. From a technical point of view, you can't make any mistakes...it shows up straight away on the large screen".[7] In addition to color display, the animation team worked especially hard on techniques that mimicked the styles of Japanese cartoonists, known as "manga," and translating them into their own craft of "a specific style, both realistic and mature. No bluffing, no tricks, nothing overcooked".[7] According to Jousset, "Marjane had quite an unusual way of working...Marjane insisted on being filmed playing out all the scenes...it was a great source of information for the animators, giving them an accurate approach to how they should work".[7] With this in mind, the animators commented on the immense hardships they faced when creating each image of "1,200 shots" through Satrapi's perspective because even though "Marjane's drawings looked very simple and graphic...they're very difficult to work on because there are so few identifying marks. Realistic drawings require outstanding accuracy".[7] Despite the difficulties in working with animation film, however, Satrapi's drive and determination to make the film motivated the animators to finish each graphic image with full accuracy. Following alongside a more traditional style of graphic imagery was not only difficult in terms of drawing, but also in terms of locating a team to draw the images since traditional animators "hardly exist in France anymore".[7] With a group of more than 100 people, though, animator Pascal Chevé confirmed the variety of style each team member brought to the table: "An animator will be more focused on trying to make the character move in the right way. Assistant animators will then put the final touches to the drawings to make sure they're true to the original. Then the 'trace' team comes in, and they work on each drawing with...a felt pen, to ensure that they are consistent with the line that runs throughout the movie".[7]

Although it was hard to craft realistic cartoon drawings, Jousset said the biggest challenge was staying on schedule and within budget of "6 million Euros, which is reasonable for a 2D movie made in France",[7] but that "I think the culmination of the fact that it was a true story, that the main character worked with you, that an animated movie dealt with a current issue and that it was intended for adults was tremendously exciting for the team".[7]

• Iranian cinema
• List of animated feature-length films
• List of films based on French-language comics

• Hohenadel, Kristin (21 January 2007). "An Animated Adventure, Drawn From Life". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
• Thompson, N. P. (26 January 2008). "Iranian life in cartoon motion". Northwest Asian Weekly. Seattle. Archived from the original on 30 November 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
• Satrapi, Marjane (February 2008). "Marjane Satrapi". ION Magazine (Interview). Interviewed by Michael Mann. Vancouver: ION Publishing. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
• DePaul, Amy (5 February 2008). "Man with a Country: Amy DePaul interviews Seyed Mohammad Marandi". Guernica. New York. Retrieved 21 December 2013.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Persepolis (film).

• Official website
• Official website (Requires Adobe Flash Player)
• Persepolis at IMDb
• Persepolis at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Persepolis at Box Office Mojo
• Persepolis at Metacritic
• Persepolis at Rotten Tomatoes
• Persepolis at Film Education