Born in Tabriz, Iran on 9.2.1972, Ali Samadi Ahadi 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 "Pettson & Findus", the screen adaptation of a popular series of children's books.

After "Die Mamba" ("The Mamba", 2014), a flamboyant spy comedy starring Michael Niavarani and Christoph Maria Herbst, Ahadi went on to direct two more films in the same series: "Pettersson & Findus II - Das schönste Weihnachten überhaupt" ("Pettson & Findus 2", 2016) and "Pettersson und Findus - Findus zieht um" ("Pettson and Findus – Findus Moves Out", 2018). He also produced several films by other directors, including the multi-award-winning animated film "Teheran Tabu" ("Tehran Taboo", DE/AT 2017) by Ali Soozandeh; the documentary "Kleine Germanen" ("Little Germans", DE/AT 2018) by Frank Geiger and Mohammad Farokhmanesh, which explores the lives of children raised in the far-right scene; and the historical drama "Morgen sind wir frei" ("Tomorrow We Are Free", 2019) by Hossein Pourseifi, set during the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

With the animated films "Peterchens Mondfahrt" ("Moonbound", 2021) and "Die Mucklas und wie sie zu Pettersson und Findus kamen" ("The Mucklas and How They Came to Pettson and Findus", 2022), Ahadi returned to children's cinema before shifting focus to a much more adult theme. Her 2024 film "Sieben Tage" ("Seven Days"), written by Mohammad Rasoulof, follows an Iranian women's rights activist who escapes to another country, only to find herself caught in a personal conflict as she continues to fight for the women of her homeland despite the risks. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2024 and was released in German cinemas in May 2025.