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  • The story is based on your real-life experiences growing up in Iran

  • and Austria, and France, and is this movie a hundred percent

  • autobiographical? Or is this a fictional story

  • inspired by your ordeals?

  • I think the second thing is

  • is better put because you know it's certainly not the documentary about my life,

  • and it certainly is subjective point of view, and

  • is certainly that when you may cast script, you know, part of that storytelling

  • we should never forget it. So if I pretend that it is 100%

  • autobiographical that means that a dog looks like a dog that I draw,

  • that this thing I said exactly I said this thing--

  • Which is not true. Of course is a part of storytelling-- is based on my own

  • experiences and then you know

  • you have to me make a story. I think even documentaries they are...

  • they are part fictional. As soon as you you make a story you have to have some

  • fiction otherwise it doesn't work.

  • Whats inspired you to create the Persepolis graphic novels?

  • Well you know that was really my answer to the words--to the word

  • because you know the two times that left Iran in eighty four and in ninety four

  • I heard so many crazy things about ... Iran.

  • People they wear saying and I was right this is not like this this is not like that.

  • And you know...

  • that is a choice reality that you see on the TV channel.

  • That I don't say doesn't exist, it does, but it is many other realities that

  • we never see, so you know, that was really to say

  • this..I will give you at least another point of view, is a very personal one

  • just engage my own person, but this is it and

  • so that was the beginning, how I started it, and of course you know I

  • I wrote it five years after I

  • left Iran the second time. Because you know, I needed to have distance with

  • the story. I didn't have to be angry anymore. I didn't have any violence

  • in me, because you know you cannot answer to the stupidity

  • by stupid, you can not answer to the violence by violence. So it's extremely important to take a step back

  • and look at the thing. So that is what I tried to do

  • and that was the reason I made it in the first place.

  • Then how did the graphic novels then turn into a movie?

  • That was a mess because I never wanted to do that,

  • and I always thought it was a very bad idea, I still do. Is that because you're

  • a good cartoonist that you become a good movie-maker. And it's not that because something work

  • as a comic that it will work as a movie.

  • But knowing that was very good because I knew the danger of the project,

  • that you shouldn't make an adaptation, we had a translation.

  • We had to really make an adaptation. That means forgetting about the book

  • taking the material and turning it into a cinematographic

  • language. But I made it because a friend of mine wanted to become a producer,

  • you know,

  • and I was like, you know, I would like to work with my best friend Vincent, and I want a studio in

  • Paris, and I want this, and I want that--

  • and he say, "Yeah, okay." And I was like, shit, now I have to do it so

  • That is how it started.

  • I found this film very...

  • insightful in providing a perspective from an every day

  • Iranians point of view which is not common

  • in film. Was was at the point? To get a woman's point of view

  • who lives in Iran--

  • It's not a woman or a man.

  • You know, the fact is that I am a woman, you know, if I was not a woman I

  • would be a man. It is a very personal point of view. Since I didn't want that to become

  • political, historical, or sociological statement

  • I had to write it in my name. I had to put it in my name.

  • It happens that I'm a woman, but it's a human point of view, and really

  • if there is one message in this movie is the humanistic message

  • is that human being, anywhere, is the same.

  • And they have the right to live, because they have dreams, because they have love,

  • because they have parents and kids, and the life of all of us

  • is worth something, and then we have to understand the

  • situation is not as easy as we think.

The story is based on your real-life experiences growing up in Iran

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