Josef Fares (born 19 September 1977) is a Swedish-Lebanese film director and game designer, being born in Lebanon and moving to Sweden at 10 to flee the Lebanese Civil War. He is a well-known name in Swedish film industry, and is famous for his comedy films.
In 2010, he took interest in video game design, and started to work with local video game companies to create a video game about two brothers. The game became Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and propelled him to fame in a completely different medium. Fares would later help found Hazelight with some his Brothers colleagues, developing A Way Out and It Takes Two with EA as the publisher. These games' most notable feature is their strong emphasis on cooperation: while Brothers is a single-player game, the player controls two characters at once; A Way Out and It Takes Two, meanwhile, are built entirely around cooperative multiplayer and have no single-player mode.
He is also known for his bombastic speech at The Game Awards 2017.
Filmography:
Films directed by Fares:
- Jalla! Jalla! (2000)
- Kopps (2003)
- Zozo (2005)
- Leo (2007)
- Balls (2010)
Games directed by Fares:
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013)
- A Way Out (2018)
- It Takes Two (2021)
