EXCLUSIVE: Kathleen Kennedy has paid fond tribute to Marjane Satrapi, the artist, animator and Persepolis filmmaker who died Thursday at 56. “We’ve lost a true original,” the longtime Lucasfilm president said in part. Read her full remembrance below.

Kennedy worked with Satrapi on Persepolis, the filmmaker’s 2007 pic that earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and racked up awards from the Cannes Film Festival and National Board of Review to critics groups and film festivals around the world. It also earned a slew of nominations from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Critics Choice, Annie Awards and many more.

“Marjane Satrapi understood what every great filmmaker acknowledges, that the most personal story, told without flinching, becomes the most universal,” Kennedy said of Satrapi. “She took her childhood in Tehran, the fear, the defiance, the love and turned it into something the whole world recognized as its own.”

Kennedy was a producer on Persepolis, which tells Satrapi’s own story — adapted from her series of autobiographical graphic novels — of an outspoken Iranian girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution. Our sister site IndieWire reported that Kennedy approached Satrapi about acquiring movie rights. The filmmaker declined, but Kennedy came on board as a producer, securing production funds through an American distribution deal while giving full creative control to Satrapi and her fellow first-time writer-director Vincent Paronnaud.

“Kathleen Kennedy liked the story so much,” Satrapi said in a 2007 interview with The New York Times. “We met in L.A. and she’s such a busy lady, I said, ‘I really don’t know how to thank you.’ She told me, ‘Make a good movie; that’s the best thanks.’ “

Here is Kennedy’s full statement:

“Marjane Satrapi understood what every great filmmaker acknowledges, that the most personal story, told without flinching, becomes the most universal. She took her childhood in Tehran, the fear, the defiance, the love and turned it into something the whole world recognized as its own.
 
Working with Marjane let me experience not only her enormous talent but a friendship I will always treasure. She was an artist of conscience and ferocious heart, who said out loud what too many only whispered about her homeland, and about an industry that still hesitates to trust women with the biggest canvases.
 
She broke the door open, on her own uncompromising terms. We’ve lost a true original. My thoughts are with her family and with everyone who found themselves in her orbit. Stories like hers are why we do this, and her powerful presence will stay with us long after today.“