07/11/2006

Animated film Persepolis – an adaptation of the four-volume best-selling comic strip by Marjane Satrapi – is on its last lap of production as the artist and co-director of the film has revealed.

Co-directed by Vincent Paronnaud (an artist better known under the name of Winshluss), a first screening of the film took place in a Champs-Elysées cinema in Paris in October, with a 63-minute version of the 90-minute animated film, which recounts Satrapi’s childhood in Iran until the downfall of the Shah’s regime and the start of the Iran/Iraq war, before her exile to Austria as a teenager and subsequent return to Tehran.

The film takes a humoristic look at Iranian feminism, one which led to the translation of the four-volume Persepolis (published between 2000 and 2003) into over 20 languages. The book sold 400,000 copies in France and 1.2 million worldwide and won several awards, including the Comic Strip of the Year award in 2004 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

After having refused that her work be adapted into a fiction film, Satrapi (born in Iran in 1969 and today living in France) decided to head her own animated version in black and white, made for the most part in 2D. Three French studios join her in the adventure: Je suis bien content (run by Frank Ekinci), Bibo Films (founded by Bibo Bergeron) and Pumpkin 3D. The French voices of the leading roles will be supplied by Chiara Mastroianni, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian and Catherine Deneuve, who also did the voice in the English version alongside Gena Rowlands.

Produced by Marc-Antoine Robert and Xavier Rigault for 247 Films, the €6.06m Persepolis includes €900,000 from France 3 Cinéma (€450,000 in pre-sales and €450,000 in co-production funding), €500,000 in advances in receipts and €70,000 in support for new production technologies from the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), €67,000 from the GAN foundation and US co-financing from Kathleen Kennedy (Steven Spielberg’s producer).

Sold internationally by Celluloid Dreams, the film – already pre-sold to the US by Sony Classics – will be released in France through Diaphana and is expected to be ready for April 2007 with its eyes set on Cannes.

(Translated from French)