Persepolis an Animated Triumph

Persepolis isn’t just a good animated movie. “It’s a small landmark in feature animation,” writes Nick Pinkerton of the Village Voice. Rendered with handcrafted charm in black and white, it tells the poignant-yet-funny story of a girl growing up amidst the Iranian revolution. But “bare synopsis doesn’t begin to convey [its] imaginative breadth,” says Newsweek’s David Ansen.

Though artistically ambitious—the Observer’s Andrew Sarris called it a hard-to-describe “mix of anime, animation, and the editing liberties of F.W. Murnau and the German Expressionists”—Pinkerton promises “there’s nothing obscure or ‘difficult’ about Persepolis. Based on the autobiographical graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, it's out in French, with an English dub due soon. “It’s not to be missed in any language,” Ansen says. (More graphic novel stories.)