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Ali Samadi Ahadi – Director
Born in Tabriz, Iran on 9.2.1972, he fled from his country during the first Iraq war. He took his final school examinations in Hanover. There he also studied sociology and electronic media design, but then he went to Kassel to study film. Since 2000 he has been working as an independent director and editor and made several short documentaries.
His first long documentary was "Lost Children" (2005, with Oliver Stoltz) and dealt with child soldiers in Uganda. It was awarded - among other prizes - Deutscher Filmpreis 2006 for Best Documentary. Ahadi's next project was the feature film "Salami Aleikum", a comedy about an iranian-german clash of cultures which was released in July 2009. Ahadi's film went on to win the German Film Critics Award for Best Debut.
His next documentary "The Green Wave" (2010) dealt with the political reform movement in Iran and was awarded the 2011 Grimme Award in the category "Culture and Information". Ali Samadi Ahadi then directed the comedy "45 Minuten bis Ramallah" ("45 Minutes to Ramallah", D/F 2013) about a Palestinian living in Berlin who travels to East-Jerusalem in order to smuggle the body of his deceased father into the Palestinian territory. This was followed by "Pettersson & Findus", the screen adaptation of a popular series of children's books.