Who says you need a big-budget, famous studio (such as Pixar) to make a quality piece of animated filmmaking? That seems to be what is accepted as evidenced by the amount of them that we get in cinemas. Persepolis proves to be the opposite of that, a true example that simple can sometimes be better.

Based on the graphic novel by the same name, Persepolis tells the story of a young girl, Marjane Satrapi, who grows up in the midst of the revolution in 1970s Iran.

From the opening few seconds of Persepolis it's clear that this isn’t going to be your average animated film that we’re all used to. It’s done in stark black-and-white contrast which provides a fantastically unusual visual experience for the audience. It’s the kind of animation that anyone with a fair knowledge of a relevant computer program could conjure up if given the time and money to do so. It’s the simplicity of how the film is drawn and animated that gives it most of its charm — from its extremely simplified backdrops to the simple and sparsely detailed expressions of the characters. It’s amazing how such simply drawn expressions and facial features can so accurately and powerfully convey genuine human emotions and make the viewer feel them along with the characters. After all it is just manipulation of shapes and colours on-screen but when in the right hands, as it clearly is here, it can be even more effective than a live action human face.

The films deals with all kinds of issues, both personal and societal, such as politics and religion. The film is set amidst the Iranian revolution back in the '70s and in that respect it does tend to oversimplify things. It is here that the film’s primary weakness is contained; because we see everything pretty much from the perspective of a young girl things aren’t delved into as much as called for.