Abiba Coulibaly is an Anglo-Ivorian film programmer with a background in critical geography, whose work explores the intersection of ethics and aesthetics.

In 2022, she initiated the Magnum Photos Film Festival and joined the programming team for Open City Documentary Festival. After working across the Programming and Archival departments at the BFI she has conceived numerous film programmes in a freelance capacity in London (the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Barbican, Autograph ABP), as well as internationally at Ocean Space (Venice), HKW (Berlin), and Dakar (Yennenga Centre, Ciné Banlieue). She has facilitated the UK premiere of several radical and experimental documentaries from the African continent including Xaraasi Xanne (2022), Au cimetière de la pellicule (2023), Coconut Head Generation (2023), Fragments from Heaven (2022), Ballade aux sources (1965) and Memories of an Unborn Sun (2024).

Alongside her work in established cultural spaces, she maintains an independent, anti-establishment programming practice as the founder of Brixton Community Cinema and film cooperative Atlas Cinema, two ongoing experiments in what democratising access to cinema—as both a medium and space—could look like.

She recently joined the Royal College of Art’s School of Architecture as an Associate Lecturer, continuing to integrate her film practice with questions of spatial and civic equity, following her participation in New Architecture Writers and 2023 commission from the London Festival of Architecture.

Her writing, which includes bylines for Montez Press, Sight & Sound, Air Afrique and the Architectural Review, typically focuses on the geopolitical context of sites of cultural production and exhibition.

contact: abiba.coulibaly@live.co.uk