How did Persepolis [trailer, film focus] come about?
Marc-Antoine Robert: Marjane and I were friends and I’d worked for five years at France 3 Cinma co-producing films. I met my associate Xavier Rigault there who worked in exhibition, on programming in the Path and Gaumont cinemas. We wanted to find the right project to start in production and Marjane began to receive a lot of offers from the United States for rights’ acquisitions for her graphic novel. We both came to the conclusion that if we produced the film in France between friends and people we trusted that would be the best guarantee of respect for the artistic integrity of the film. How did you secure the €6m budget? Marjane and Vincent wrote the script quite quickly and when we read it, we were taken aback. We then decided to form 247 Films and started to look for financing. We didn’t follow this custom for animated films where you make a demo recording that you lug around with you to festivals and other animation forums. The script was so remarkable and above average, and with
