HOT: Persepolis Gate Cinema, Notting Hill Gate

An engaging and charming animated autobiographical film about a young girl growing up in 70s and 80s Iran. It's amazing how a few line drawings could convey such humour and poignancy, and I most enjoyed Marjane drawn as a strong-willed and questioning little girl. I empathised with her sense of dislocation when she moved to Austria as a teenager, her repressed spirit when she moved back to Tehran and got married at 21, and mostly I learnt about a period of Iranian history of which I'd never really known. Futher, the Gate Cinema is a lovely old-school venue with a plastered decorative ceiling, but refurbished with comfortable chairs and side tables.