AP reported from Paris that the French presidency confirmed Satrapi's death on Thursday. The Guardian and BBC also reported that the creator of Persepolis had died aged 56. The Guardian reported that Satrapi's family said she died in her sleep, a year after the death of her husband, Swedish film producer and actor Mattias Ripa; AP did not report a clinical cause of death in the presidency's confirmation.
Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969, AP reported. Her parents sent her to Vienna in 1983, and she later returned to Iran before moving to France in 1994, according to AP's account of her life. Those movements formed part of the autobiographical material later associated with Persepolis, but the death reports did not make a medical or official cause-of-death finding public.
The Guardian reported that Persepolis was first published in French in 2000. The Princess of Asturias Foundation's 2024 award announcement described the work as a four-volume autobiographical story about Satrapi's childhood and adolescence in Iran. The foundation also identified Satrapi as a Franco-Iranian cartoonist, film director and painter.
Satrapi co-directed the animated film adaptation of Persepolis with Vincent Paronnaud, The Guardian reported. The film brought the graphic memoir to a wider cinema audience after the book's publication, while keeping Satrapi linked to both comics and film rather than to one field alone.