Gianluca Costantini and Cinemovel Present Persepolis in Ravenna

On September 9, as part of Vengo dalla Luna Fest, a special event dedicated to Marjane Satrapi’s masterpiece and to the relationship between comics, freedom, memory and civic engagement

On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, Ravenna-based cartoonist Gianluca Costantini and Cinemovel will present Persepolis in Ravenna, the animated film written and directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, based on Satrapi’s celebrated graphic novel.

The event will take place at Spazio ZARA, Via Zara 27, Ravenna, as part of Vengo dalla Luna Fest, a cultural mini-festival within the broader Uajù_154 project. Costantini and Cinemovel will introduce the film at 8:30 pm, followed by the screening of Persepolis at 9:15 pm. The full programme is available on the Municipality of Ravenna website.

The choice of Persepolis brings to the festival a story in which personal experience and political history are constantly intertwined. Through Satrapi’s autobiographical narrative, the Iran of the 1979 Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, repression and exile is seen through the eyes of a young woman growing up while trying to defend her freedom.

Originally published as a graphic novel and later adapted into an animated film, Persepolis has become one of the landmark works of contemporary comics and an extraordinary example of drawing’s ability to tell stories about politics, personal memory, identity and repression without separating History from the lives of the people who experience it.

For Gianluca Costantini, the event comes at a particularly significant moment. The September 2026 issue of linus, dedicated to Marjane Satrapi and Iran, features “Love Is the Answer,” a new comic written by Elettra Stamboulis and illustrated by Costantini. The work also returns to Iran, its history and its present, reflecting on the relationship between drawing, politics and freedom, and on the influence Satrapi’s work has had on the way these subjects are told through comics.

The Ravenna event therefore also offers an opportunity to consider what Persepolis continues to represent almost twenty years after the film’s release: not simply an autobiographical work, but a story about the possibility of resisting repression through culture, irony, memory and freedom of expression.

These are themes that have long been central to the work collected on ChannelDraw, where drawing is used as a form of journalism, testimony and civic action to tell the stories of political prisoners, journalists, activists and people targeted by repression. Iran occupies an important place in this archive, from the struggle for women’s rights to the stories of those who continue to pay an extraordinarily high price for exercising their freedom of expression.

Vengo dalla Luna Fest is part of Uajù_154, a project developed by the Ravenna-based informal group Tramelibere, with the support of the Municipality of Ravenna’s Youth Policies Department, Informagiovani Ravenna and the Europe Direct Centre of Romagna, and funded through Erasmus+ Youth Participation Activities. The project brings together young people from Ravenna and the province of Caserta.

Its first phase brought thirty teenagers to Maiano di Sessa Aurunca from August 17 to 22, where they spent a week working on land confiscated from the Camorra and dedicated to the memory of Alberto Varone, an innocent victim of organized crime. The property has been managed for twenty years by the social cooperative Al di là dei sogni, which develops economic and social initiatives that also provide employment opportunities for people experiencing marginalization.

From September 7 to 11, the second phase brings the experience developed in Campania back to Ravenna, transforming it into public opportunities for participation, discussion and exchange. Vengo dalla Luna Fest, taking place on September 9 and 10, forms the cultural heart of the programme through cinema, meetings and music, with events aimed particularly at young people but open to the entire community.

In this context, screening Persepolis means bringing geographically and historically different experiences together around a common question: how can we build a culture capable of resisting violence, authoritarianism and the logic of power?

Wednesday, September 9, 2026 — Spazio ZARA, Via Zara 27, Ravenna. At 8:30 pm, introduction to Persepolis with Gianluca Costantini and Cinemovel; at 9:15 pm, screening of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.

Source: Municipality of Ravenna — Uajù_154 Project and Vengo dalla Luna Fest

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