Marjane Satrapi is annoyed. Waves of irritation drift off her and blend with the mushroom clouds of cigarette smoke that she impatiently snorts out with every answer. Her arms are tightly folded across her chest as she smoulders, hunched in a baroque armchair at the end of a day’s press interviews in Paris. The only time the barrier of her defensively braced biceps is let down is when she’s forced to fire up another cigarette. She is formidable and forthright, witty and scabrous. She’s more than a little scary.

A French-Iranian writer and illustrator turned film-maker, with thick black hair and a rapid-fire command of English that feels like being machine-gunned, Satrapi seems to be able to tap into vast reservoirs of irate scorn at a moment’s notice. It’s rather entertaining, although a bit like Russian roulette. You never know what line of inquiry is going to set her off on a rant. On the power of humour to convey a message universally, she starts calmly enough. “When you start laughing with somebody you understand the spirit of this person.” Then Satrapi revs up into one of her pet theories. “For me, humour is a question of intelligence. Somebody who doesn’t like to laugh is just stupid. If you don’t understand that life is already too short and too heavy, that if you have to also live it solemnly, it just means you are stupid. That is what it means. Extremely serious people, for me they are dumb asses. That is all.” Phew.

For Satrapi, perhaps attack is the best form of defence. She has, after all, the right to feel besieged. When her feature debut Persepolis, an animation based on her autobiographical graphic novels, scooped the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, it sparked charges of Islamophobia and accusations of antiIranian sentiments from Mehdi Kalhor, a cultural adviser to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President. “Of course they haven’t seen the movie!” fumes Satrapi. “They say it is antiIranian, which is not true because everybody who sees this movie will have some sympathy for the Iranians because suddenly they are not reduced just to fanatics and terrorists. Then it was called Islamophobic. I’m not talking about Islam at all, I’m talking about a repressive environment that can be there or can be anywhere else.”

In the pursuit of balance, it should be noted that for each of the very few criticisms of the film from Satrapi’s birth country, there are a host of accolades from elsewhere. At Cannes, it was one of the hottest titles in the market, commanding an unthinkable price for a political, satirical black and white animation. And it was recently announced that Persepoliswill be France’s nomination for the Oscar for best foreign language film.

And the praise is wholly justified. A feisty and funny memoir of Satrapi’s experiences growing up in Iran against the backdrop of the Islamic revolution, the story combines moments of hilarity with perceptive glimpses of a darker side to the life of a headstrong preteen. The young Marjane stages small acts of rebellion against a regime that snuffs out her freedoms one by one – she buys black-market cassettes of songs by Western musicians then thrashes them out on air guitar in her bedroom; she idolises Bruce Lee and plays football with the boys.

Her parents, who brought their daughter up to be an individual with a mind of her own, begin to recognise in Marjane something of the uncompromising idealism that caused her beloved uncle to be imprisoned under the Shah, and then executed by the subsequent regime. They make the heartbreaking decision to send their 14-year-old daughter away to safety in Vienna, a kind of purgatory that keeps her out of trouble but leaves her with a profound sense of dislocation and alienation. This culminates, nearly fatally, in depression, pneumonia and sleeping rough, after which Marjane returns to Iran, a stranger in her home country.

It’s a very personal piece, but one that has caused Satrapi to be asked to comment on life in the East and the West – and exile in between. But she says she can be a spokeswoman only for herself. “I’m not a politician, I’m not a historian, I’m not a sociologist.”

As an Iranian who lived in Austria and settled in France, spends time in America and is married to a Swede, Satrapi is dismissive of the idea of cultural identity. There is, she argues, so much creative cross-pollination between cultures she prefers to be thought of simply as “a human being”.

She hasn’t been back to Iran for seven years, and has no intention of doing so. “I don’t feel comfortable going back for the reason that in Iran, it is not a state of law, so you don’t know what is going to happen. It is a little like the Wild West – since you don’t know, it is better not to take the risk.”

Instead, Satrapi spends her time in countries where she can say what she wants and, most importantly, smoke unmolested. So how does she get on in the US? “I have no problem smoking wherever I want in America,” she says with the ghost of a smile. “I just tell them I have to, for health reasons.”

Persepolis is being shown at The Times BFI London Film Festival, Odeon West End 1, Oct 29 and 31. For festival news, reviews, video reports and gala competitions, go to http://timesonline.co.uk/lff

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