In Rome, where he spent the first months of his stay, he became acquainted with famous Italian film directors Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica.

The neo-realistic films of De Sica ("The Bicycle Thief", "Miracle in Milan "... ) made an impression on him.

His most important teacher at The Academy of Arts in Prague was Karel Zeman, the famous Czech animation artist.

He worked as assistant director for Vittorio De Sica, performed on the stage, appeared in musicals and dubbed a number of Italian movies for distribution in Iran.

In 1965, he was engaged by The Ministry of Art and Culture to run and extend the state workshop for animated cartoons.

In 1969, Karimi began shooting the film The Thief and the Policeman - a Persian adaptation of the story of cops and robbers.

In the same year, the British director Terence Young shot some scenes of the film Poppy is also a Flower in Iran.

In addition, Karimi wrote a number of screenplays for movie and TV productions; a few of them were commercialized under the name of others and others have not been realized until this day.

In 1996/97, he produced for a private channel the puppet show Unruly, a TV series that has been re-run repeatedly at the request of the spectators.

His other works in the post-revolutionary era include the production and direction of a series of short TV films about pollution control and health care, as well as books about theatre and cinema.