Babak Najafi

Babak Najafi Karami was born on September 14, 1975 in Teheran, Iran. He had to move to Sweeden as a refugee from Iran when he was 11 years old. He discovered film and enjoyed making movies in Swedish once he learned the language. This is the main reason why he was not widely known in Hollywood until around 2010. His work granted him a significant amount of awards and recognition in the European film scene, including an award at the Stocholm Film Festival in 1999. His first well known movie was a short movie called Elixir in 2004, but in 2010 he won the prestigious Guldbagge award for the movie Sebbe.  Later on, he directed movies Easy Money in 2010 along with the sequel Easy Money II: Hard to Kill. His most popular film, however, is 2016’s London Has Fallen, which was his first English movie. He then directed Olympus Has Fallen, which brought in $206 million even though critics were not so impressed.