Osinachi Ibe is a Nigerian-American writer, filmmaker, and film programmer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work explores love, transcendence, awakening, and where ordinary life meets the metaphysical. It is expressive and incorporates elements of narrative and experimental cinema, and poetry. Osinachi earned her MFA in Film Directing from Chapman University where she received a graduate fellowship. She is an alum of the 2022 Sundance Uprise Grant Fund, Headlands Center for the Arts' 2023 Artist in Residence Program, and SFFILM’s 2023 & 2024 FilmHouse Residencies. She was awarded SFFILM's 2024 Rainin Grant.   

 

At its best, Osinachi believes cinema is an art form that interprets life with a distinct point of view, and gives audiences an experience of enlightenment, connection, and empathy. She is interested in cinema’s aesthetic schools, surrealism, how narrative structures & techniques shape cinematic storytelling, and hybrid cinema. She sees all of these as tools to expand the film medium and liberate filmmakers’ authentic voice. 

 

From 2022-2026 Osinachi worked with California Film Institute—as a film programmer for the Mill Valley Film Festival and special programs, as manager and producer of Mind the Gap, the organization’s acclaimed gender equity and inclusion program, and as an instructor with the education department. 

 

Osinachi is currently developing her debut feature, Karolina and Udochi Dance in the Woods at Dusk!, a romantic fantasy about first love. She is the creator of Cinema of the Senses, a film workshop series that shares the greatest potential of cinema with artists and audiences.