Persepolis

I came out of this movie feeling as if I knew Marjane Satrapi. The way in which the story is told is fantastic - it really is as if you're reading her journal. As she grows up from being a young girl to an adult, at each age the story is told with a corresponding maturity, and highlighting things which seem like very personal memories. As a young girl, the stories she is told are very black and white, and as she gets older the complexity increases, which is exactly what you would expect. Although there is lots of political activity, she makes fun of herself and highlights her own shortcomings as much as she highlights the repressive elements in her homeland. By telling of her own experiences it really is extremely easy to see how so much of it is common to a whole generation of Iranians. Her love of her family and her country came across very strongly, and you really felt as if she had laid herself bare. A moving and entertaining movie as much as it is educational about post-1979 Iran.