Writer/director Marjane Satrapi unravels the mixed messages that have been flying around the award-winning animated film Persepolis.

Sitting across from me at a beachside restaurant, Marjane Satrapi is in a no-nonsense sort of mood, juggling a hasty lunch with interview duty. Wearing an all-black outfit reflecting her seriousness, the Iranian-born 38-year-old is at The Cannes Film Festival to discuss Persepolis, her much-praised animated feature based on her popular series of graphic novels. The film, which ultimately shared the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes last year, depicts Satrapi's life growing up in Iran at the time of the Islamic Revolution. Just don't call it autobiographical, even though the lead character is called Marji. "I don't like that term," snaps Satrapi, still chewing on her food. "An autobiography is written by people to solve the problems with those around them. They don't dare to say things to their family and friends' faces. That is nothing to do with what I did."

Satrapi is typically sharp and to the point, and she doesn't shy away from argument. It's easy to see why she's already developed a low tolerance for the way that journalists in the West portray The Middle East. "The image in the media - calling people terrorists, fanatical, etc - is extremely condescending. It's dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatics; you reduce them to some abstract notion. It's akin to fascism."

Satrapi is quick to downplay the early accusations that Persepolis faced when it was labelled Islamophobic in her homeland. "The Iranian minister of culture sent a letter to the French Embassy in Iran, but that's it," says Satrapi of the letter that described her film as 'an unreal picture of the outcomes and achievements of the Islamic revolution'.

"People love it when something becomes sensational and controversial; they want to make it bigger without understanding that they create a danger. I say to the media, 'Don't make it bigger, because then you will put me in danger. I'm not in danger now, so please calm down!'"

It didn't help matters when, back in February, the film was chosen to be France's representative at the Oscars, over the popular Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose, which caused further unrest in Tehran. It was eventually nominated for Best Animated Feature. While it was beaten to the prize by the Disney favourite Ratatouille, Satrapi is not surprised that Persepolis has made a splash in America. "When my first book was published in America, they thought that nobody would buy it, but it became a huge success. That's now where my books sell the most. So I'm used to American audiences. There are many normal Americans; they're not ignorant, dumb people."

Indeed, Hollywood was quick to realise the potential of Satrapi's books when they were first published.although the studio executives didn't seem to quite grasp the book's premise. "At first, they wanted to make a Beverly Hills 90210-style TV series with real actors," sighs Satrapi, with a dismissive shake of the head, "where there would be parties and then suddenly a bomb would explode."

There was also a rumour of a mooted movie version with Jennifer Lopez playing her mother and Brad Pitt playing her father. "That was a joke that I started!" laughs Satrapi. "It was a response to some of the jerks in the film industry that I was having to deal with. They would just talk about money, money, money - and not the actual story."

Satrapi's decision to adapt her books into an animated film came after French producer Marc-Antoine Robert petitioned her to produce it. "The movie is animated because we didn't have any other choice," she reflects. "If we made it with real people and on location, it's suddenly a film about The Middle East, and that alienates people. The drawings give it an abstraction; it can be anywhere or anyone, and then it becomes a lot more universal and humanistic."

Unlike the books, the film works as one long flashback, anchored by scenes of the grown-up Marji waiting at Paris' airport, smoking and reflecting on her childhood. Satrapi had been through this herself: one Friday in Paris she headed out to the airport with the full intention of leaving for the homeland that she had left behind. Instead, she sat there, crying and watching planes take off. With wounds that cut that deep, it's no surprise that Satrapi admits that she was dreading the idea of writing the script.

"It's not easy squeezing sixteen years of life into ninety minutes," she says. To put her task in context, Persepolis 1 (published in French in 2000) covered the first ten years of her life until the overthrow of the Shah regime and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war. A year later, the second volume covered Satrapi's life up to the age of fourteen, when she left for Vienna, while the third and fourth books covered her exile in Austria and eventual return to Iran.

Satrapi stresses how different the resulting film is from these books. "It's based on the same material and character, but out of this initial material we made a completely different narration that has nothing to do with the books. It's two different narrations from the same story."

Based in Paris since she relocated there in 1994, Satrapi hasn't been back to Iran for eight years. "I have the life that I want," she says. "I live where I want. I do the work that I want." Asked how she feels about her homeland now, the director confidently concludes: "Of course, it's my roots. If I was a man, I'd say that Iran is my mother and France is my wife."

Persepolis is released on August 21.