The screenwriter, comic artist and director of French-Iranian nationality, Marjane Satrapi, was awarded this Tuesday with the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2024, second of the eight international awards announced this year by the Princess of Asturias Foundation and that fulfill this its XLIV edition.
The jury of the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities has recognized the screenwriter for “her essential voice in the defense of human rights and freedom.”
“Satrapi is a symbol of civic commitment led by women. Due to her audacity and artistic production, she is considered one of the most influential people in the dialogue between cultures and generations,” says the ruling read this afternoon at the Barceló Oviedo Cervantes hotel in the Asturian capital.
Marjane Satrapi, Princess of Asturias Communication Award – Photo: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON
For the jury, the award wishes to highlight Marjane Satrapi’s talent “to reinvent the relationships between art and communication, as in her graphic novel Persepolisin which he exemplarily captures the search for a more just and inclusive world.
The jury was made up of: Luis María Anson Oliart, Rosa María Calaf Solé, Irene Cano Piquero, Gabriela Cañas Pita de la Vega, Concepción Cascajosa Virino, Adela Cortina Orts, Estrella de Diego Otero, Miguel Falomir Faus, Taciana Fisac Badell, Álex Grijelmo García, Alma Guillermoprieto, Miguel Ángel Liso Tejada, Catalina Luca de Tena y García-Conde, Marchioness of Valle de Tena, Miguel Ángel Oliver Fernández, Enrique Pascual Pons, Carmen Riera i Guilera and Diana Sorensen, chaired by Víctor García de la Concha , and Óscar Loureda Lamas acting as secretary.
Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht (Iran) on November 22, 1969. In 1983, conditioned by the extremism of the 1979 Revolution, her parents sent her to Vienna to finish her studies at the French Lyceum in the Austrian capital. She later returned to Tehran and entered the school of Fine Arts, but, in 1994, before graduating, she moved to France.
He studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg and later moved to Paris. Marjane Satrapi is, according to specialists, one of the most prominent names in international comics, author of what is, for many, one of the best graphic novels ever published: Persepolis (2000), an autobiographical story that narrates his childhood and adolescence in Iran.
It has been said that “few works have had such an ability to penetrate pop culture and, at the same time, be one of the best historical stories of our time.” Persepolis He won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award for best new author at the Angoulême Festival. In 2001, the second volume received, also in Angoulême, the award for best script. The third and fourth volumes achieved even greater popularity, establishing it internationally.
In 2007 he teamed up with Vincent Paronnaud to turn the comic into an animated film. The adaptation won the Critics’ Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 2007 and the César Award for best adapted screenplay in 2008, in addition to being nominated for best animated film at the 2008 Oscars.
Other of his outstanding works are Embroidery (2003) (Embroidery2004) y Chicken with prunes (2004) (Chicken with plums2005), which was also adapted to film in 2011. In 2023 he coordinated the book Woman, life, freedom (Woman, life, freedom), in which together with the political scientist Farid Vahid and the historian Abbas Milani, both Iranians, and the French reporter Jean-Pierre Perrin, as well as an international group of seventeen comic authors (including several Iranians and the Spanish Patricia Bolaños and Paco Roca)_ illustrates the revolts that occurred in Iran after the murder, in 2022, of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the so-called ‘morality police’, and denounces the repression and lack of human rights that, according to Satrapi, the Iranian society, especially women, because of the regime.
In addition to the film adaptation of PersepolisSatrapi has directed the films The Band of Jotas (The Jotas Gang2013), The Voices (The voices2015) y Radioactive (2020), a biography about the scientist Marie Curie. Another of the disciplines in which she has stood out has been painting, with important exhibitions in Parisian galleries such as the Jérôme de Noirmont gallery.
This same year, a tapestry designed by Satrapi commissioned by National Furniture of France is exhibited at the Hôtel de la Marine in Paris on the occasion of the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris. Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, Marjane Satrapi holds an honorary doctorate from the Belgian universities UC Louvain and KU Leuven. In 2024 she was elected member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.