In 1978, in Iran, the smart girl Marjane Satrapi lives the troubled period of the history of her country with the Islamic Revolution with her ideologist parents and grandmother. When she is a teenager, her parents send her to Vienna due to the war with Iraq. Marjane befriends a group of outcast students, finds love and deception and returns to her country to the arms of her family. However, the life with the fundamentalist in the government is repressive and she leaves her country again to live in France.

"Persepolis" is an interesting animation where the contemporary history of Iran is disclosed through the eyes of the lead character. This feature gives a great lesson of history highlighting the most important moments of the life of Iranian in their country. This dramatic animation has many levels but is highly recommended for adults and offers excellent dialogs and messages. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Persépolis"

Persepolis is one of the most thoughtful, poignant and original films I have ever seen. Hang on, "poignant" and "thoughful", an animated movie (and based on a comic-book, on top of that)? Exactly, because coincidentally Persepolis also happens to be the first really adult "cartoon" I've had the pleasure to watch (Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly don't count, as they were filmed with real actors first, and subsequently modified in post-production). For all their good intentions, the likes of Dreamworks and Pixar always have an eye for what the little ones want to see, while The Simpsons, despite the occasional "mature" storyline (basically Homer and Marge's sex life),contains nothing a 12-year old isn't supposed to see. As for Family Guy and South Park, they might be aimed at grown-ups with their merciless satire and, in the case of the latter series, explicit language, but are made with an almost puerile sense of joy which prompts younger kids to watch them in secret. Persepolis, on the other hand, deals with adult themes in a serious, unpretentious way. So yes, it is an animated film. Yes, it is based on a comic-book. And yes, there is the occasional neat movie reference (Rocky III being the most memorable one). That doesn't mean it's a kids' movie, though; it just means the picture was made with a particular style because it was the most effective way to tell this specific story.

And what is so special about the story? Well, it is an account of what is going on in contemporary Iran, a topic that is more relevant today than it's ever been before. And the extra layer of poignancy derives from the fact that co-director Marjane Satrapi experienced every single event in the film. After moving to France to avoid the increasingly oppressive political situation that had developed in Teheran (which the ancient Greeks called Persepolis, hence the movie's title),she published her autobiography in the form of a graphic novel, which immediately became a cult phenomenon. With the help of artist Vincent Paronnaud, the stylized drawings have become a motion picture which has already conquered critics and won several awards (the Jury Prize in Cannes being one of them).

The film's strict adherence to the book's style makes for simple but powerful viewing: the simple pictures ensure the story doesn't need to be filtered, but can be understood right away, while the use of black and white provide the images with a strength that would otherwise be missing. A good example is a scene depicting a demonstration against the despotic regime in Iran and the subsequent shooting of one of the protesters, whose body is left lying on the ground: as his blood starts to flow, the corpse almost merges with the environment, giving the shot (pun not intended) an emotional relevance it wouldn't have, had the whole thing been in color. The choice of animation proves to be particularly effective in a most unusual choice for this kind of film, namely fantasy sequences: there is a hilarious moment, for instance, when Marjane, during a stay in Vienna, looks back on her disappointment in love and sees her ex-boyfriend as a depraved freak; live-action would have ruined that scene, undoubtedly. As it is, however, it comes off not as a bizarre formal experiment, but a fundamental tool for understanding the heroine's psychology.

That said, it should also be noted that Persepolis isn't just a bold take on the difficulties in the Middle East. As seen in Clint Eastwoood's Iwo Jima double bill, the line between "heroes" and "villains" is very thin, and the film never misses the opportunity to show how bad our own society can be: Marjane ends up hating Europe more than her home-country, and at the beginning a flashback shows the British government's role in manipulating Iranian politics for money's sake. Incidentally, the latter scene is depicted as a puppet show, providing a new, fresh angle: what sets truth apart from fiction?

Persepolis works because it handles an uncomfortable subject with grace, using a simple but constantly effective storytelling technique and never once pandering to audience expectations with the usual 'toon gimmicks (even the casting proves that: except for Catherine Deneuve, who plays the low-key role of Marjane's mother, there are no famous voices in the feature). It sticks to traditions and stretches the medium at the same time, showing that animation is no longer a "children's genre" and therefore delivering a new way to look at film-making and its possibilities. For this reason, and several more, it is one of the best pictures of 2007.

Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi's 'Persepolis' graphic novel series (2000-2003) recounts her life to age 24, when she left Iran with her family's blessing for the last time and went to live in France (1994). Collaborating with her Paris studio-mate, cartoonist and video artist Vincent Paronnaud and a stellar French cast, Sagtrapi has successfully transferred her drawings and story to a 95-minute black-and-white animated film. Chiara Mastroianni is the voice for the adolescent and young adult Marjane; Chiara's real-life mother Catherine Deneuve does Marjane's mother and veteran French star Danielle Darrieux is the voice of Marjane's feisty, outspoken, and totally irreverent grandmother. (An English-language version featuring Sean Penn, Iggy Pop, and Gena Rowlands apparently will be released later.) Word on the street is that this more handmade French animated film, now in selected US theaters, may give Pixar's slick 'Ratatouille' a run for the Best Animation Oscar this year.

Satrapi, who told this story first in autobiographical comic strips that became best-selling books, grew up in a progressive ruling-class Tehran family. An uncle with whom she was close had been to Leningrad to study Marxism-Leninism. As a little girl she picked up the radicalism, and had some of her grandmother's genes for outspokenness. Shifting allegiances and roles quickly, she soon gave up supporting the Shah and walked around the house calling for revolution. She tried on ideas constantly, posing as a prophet, then a dictator. God and Karl Marx, whom she imagines appearing to her in her bedroom, vie with each other for her affections. Her communist uncle is hopeful that the revolution will grow democratic; but while he is imprisoned and tortured by CIA-trained jailers under the Shah, he is executed under the mullahs—whom, strangely, the narrator says little about. (Khomeini is not depicted.) All the girls must take the veil. But Marji, already an avid collector of bootleg heavy metal and punk tapes, remains an obstreperous girl who in class outspokenly challenges the pious lies of her chador-wearing teachers.

Iran's war with Iraq causes terrible disruption: the house next door is destroyed. For her safety in this desperate moment for the country (1983),Marji's parents send her to Vienna, where she attends a French school, as she has all her life. Though she eventually becomes part of a group of misfit students, Vienna is a hard and lonely time for the girl. She grows up physically (which happens in seconds in the animation—the film's most eye-catching sequence) and enters love problems: first with a boy who turns out to be gay; then one who sleeps with another girl—a betrayal that makes her so despondent she becomes homeless and ill and almost dies. She returns to an Iran where the upper class is living a double life of secret alcohol parties and music. Attending university in Tehran she meets a man named Reza and marries him--but the union is a mistake, which her grandmother cheerfully dismisses. "The first marriage is just practice," she says. A bored, doodling psychiatrist listens to her troubles, tells her she's depressed, and gives her some pills--which seem to make her more depressed.

Finally the time comes when Marjane is in effect ordered by her family to leave the country for her own good. She goes to France, where she has remained ever since. That's the end of the book and the film.

Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel 'Maus' was an avowed inspiration for Satrapi's work, as well as a French comics artist named David B., whose style she imitated at first. The collaboration with Paronnaud came about after they shared a studio.

The animated 'Persepolis' received rave reviews in France and shared the Cannes festival Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas' 'Silent Light.' It premiered in the US at the New York Film Festival and opened in some US theaters on Christmas Day.

The US's newly hostile stand against Iran may spur wider Stateside interest in this film, which skillfully combines a young woman's coming of age story with contemporary political history. This remains, however, basically a child's and young adult's version of events, a kind of post-1970 'Iranian History for Dummies.' The viewpoint has obvious limitations as a depiction of the larger events that are so much a part of the story Satrapi tells. The film moreover adds little that wasn't in the book other than a little more gray cross-hatching and in fact omits some day-to-day detail that make the original version specific. The film's look too remains as bare-bones, as virtually style-neutral as the book's. This is not to say 'Persepolis' hasn't complete technical integrity, clarity of storytelling, and much charm; nonetheless viewers in search of a phantasmogoric visual banquet or a thoroughgoing picture of modern Iranian history may be left hungry for more.