The characters in Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" (co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud) are simple, friendly black-and-white line drawings, as uncomplicated as characters in a children's book. Which is precisely what throws you when they get themselves put in prison or in front of a firing squad.

"Persepolis," based on a series of graphic novels in which Satrapi recalls her upbringing in Iran, tells the story of its protagonist's experiences as a young girl from a liberal, cosmopolitan family in Tehran.

The movie spans Satrapi's childhood and young adulthood, from age 7 to age 23, when, having lived through the overthrow of the shah, the Islamic revolution and the even more oppressive fundamentalist regime that followed, the Iran-Iraq war, a painful period of exile in Austria and a hasty marriage, she decides to leave her country for good. (She now lives in France, and the film was France's Academy Award entry for best foreign language film.)All of these events are recounted from the perspective of the little girl and, later, the young woman who Satrapi was at the time.

Satrapi's entire life is shaped by struggle, and when eventually she returns to Iran, she is an exile both in her own country and abroad. How she overcomes this to become productive and make something of her experiences is, in a sense, what "Persepolis" is all about.