Discussing the animated sequence in Kill Bill Volume 1, Roger Ebert said “The animated sequence, which gets us to Tokyo and supplies the backstory of O-Ren, is sneaky in the way it allows Tarantino to deal with material that might, in live action, seem too real for his stylized universe. [...] The scene works in animated long shot; in live action closeup, it would get the movie an NC-17.” His point is well-received in Persepolis, an animated film about an Iranian girl’s formative years spent in revolutionary Iran, then throughout western Europe, then eventual return from exile. On a surface level the style of animation is cartoonish and even childlike, not the mode in which you might suspect Serious Business could be conducted. The movie uses these expectations well, like a trojan horse. Almost before you’re aware of it, what seems like a perceptive if light coming-of-age tale takes on tremendous power. You may find yourself crying, and wondering why.

That initial, superficial reading may also mask the true beauty of the animation, but that is also to its credit and, at a guess, deliberate. There’s a power to watching simple fields and characters suddenly gain unexpected dimension and complexity, and under the masterful hands of Marjane Satrapi (upon whose comic book and life—she does not suffer the term “graphic novel”—Persepolis is based) and Vincent Paronnaud this technique is used sparingly, and to great effect. One gets the idea those little moments are the ones that left the deepest impression on Satrapi.

But please, don’t imagine Persepolis is a grim slog filled with stiff cartoons discussing war in detached, joyless French. Young Marjane (voiced primarily by Chiara Mastroianni) is smart, sharp-tongued, self-possessed and filled with the kind of casual arrogance familiar to anyone who’s been around children. (Earliest-remembered dream job: Prophet of God.) Her family, from her parents to her grandmother to her uncle, is similarly gifted, so Marjane comes by it naturally. There’s royalty and rebellion in their ancestry, but the Shah’s Iran has removed all but the pride from those lofty origins. So goes life in a new middle class.

A middle class framed in all corners by fear. Marjane’s childhood coexisted with the rapid decline and increasing violence of the Shah’s reign, a time marked by mass executions and announcements from the man himself that were infuriating in their innocuousness. The revolution came and an Islamic regime took the Shah’s place, and for a time—a brief time, anyway—talk of a new age spread and anything seemed possible. I imagine 1959 Cuba felt much the same way.

But what emerged from that revolution was an Iran bent on destroying individual identity, especially if that individual was female. But Marjane and her friends are sharp kids without an adult’s sense of consequence and flout the rules as often as any young girls would. Behind the stark summaries of life under dictatorships, real people live day to day lives. Marjane and her family remain strong, until her parents fear for her enough to send her to Europe.

Europe is where Marjane finds herself, though not because of the kind and welcoming nature of the people she finds there. What is the story about the fall and transformation of Iran is also about one child growing into an adult, first picking up and using pop culture ephemera (first the Bee Gees, then Iron Maiden, then punk rock) to define herself before transitioning to boys and then, eventually, back to her own family.

The cliché is that altcomix are all black and white autobiographical affairs characterized by self-absorption and adolescent profundities examined ad nauseum. Persepolis manifests none of these negative traits, and indeed the mere presence of Marjane’s grandmother, perhaps the coolest and most sane grandmother in the history of film, acts as a natural B.S. deterrant. The movie is instead buoyant, brilliant, heartbreaking and capable of rendering tears and laughter, often at the same time. The deceptively lo-fi animation style allows this flexibility in emotion that your average CGI blockbuster couldn’t dare dream for, and serves as a reminder of the power of the “primitive” art of cartooning. Comic book theorist Scott McCloud argued that abstraction in cartooning—the use of simple lines and dots to represent people and places—is necessary to its power; by breaking down what makes the world the world into its simplest forms, the audience is allowed to project onto and identify with the story more intimately than in conventional, “realistic” renderings. Persepolis embodies this principle beautifully.

By now, you’re likely aware that Persepolis, one of the finest movies of 2007, did not make the final cut for a Best Foreign Picture nomination. That its presence was near-ubiqutous in Top 10 lists across the country apparently did not matter a whit to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It has instead been shuttled to the Best Animated Feature category, where it does not stand a chance of beating Pixar’s Ratatouille. Both are fine films, but neither comfortably fits in the same category as the other. This calls into question the very nature of the BAF category: Is it meant to reward the best film that happens to be animated, or the best use of animation that happens to tell a story? Or does the category exist to make sure animated films and their players are never allowed to compete with “real” films and actors? This last rings cynical but true. In an ideal world, Persepolis would be looking at a Best Foreign Film or Best Picture nomination. It would have a better than even chance of winning.