The Ayatollah Khomeini meets punk rock in this spirited adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's celebrated graphic novel.

In 1979 Marjane is a nine-year-old Bruce Lee nut in Tehran. The fall of the Shah is cause for celebration in the Satrapi household: Marjane’s family of cosmopolitan Marxists has suffered imprisonment and intimidation. The revolution is a time of hope and opportunity. But it doesn’t last. Religious fundamentalists take control, Marjane and her friends are forced to wear the veil, and social freedoms are curtailed. Worse is to come when Iran goes to war with Iraq.

As the 1970s feminist slogan had it, “the personal is political”, but in a theocracy the political is also inescapably personal. The film folds a pocket history of Persia into Marjane’s sentimental education, but in many ways the small domestic details are the most telling, like the way a routine police check sends the whole family into panicky emergency mode in case their illicit booze is discovered. 

Outspoken and rebellious, the teenage Marjane goes through a punk phase and buys contraband Michael Jackson cassettes on the black market, but she has to talk fast when she’s accosted on the street by hardliners, two women whose billowing chadors make them look like wraiths.

The gaping disconnect between life in the public and the private spheres is your basic teenage endurance course, but here the stakes have been ratcheted up a notch or two. Satrapi keeps her story moving briskly, and even moments of extreme danger are leavened with self-mockery and satire.

As it goes on this becomes a story about conformity and individualism. Her relationship with her wise and wicked grandmother is a glowing testament to an indomitable female spirit, and when the older Marjane breaks into a croaky (English) karaoke rendition of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” it’s hard to suppress a cheer.

Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, and grew up in Tehran. She is currently based in Paris. She has written and illustrated the award-winning graphic novels Persepolis 1-4, Broderies and Poulet aux prunes. Persepolis (co-director, 07), which won a Jury Prize ex-aequo at the Cannes Film Festival, is her filmmaking debut.

Vincent Paronnaud, a.k.a. Winshluss, was born in La Rochelle, France. He has created (or co-created, with the artist Cizo) several comic books. He has directed two short films, Raging Blues (co-director, 03) and O’Boy What Nice Legs (co-director, 04), R. Persepolis (co-director, 07) is his feature directorial debut.