Olivier Barlet is a French journalist, translator, film critic and researcher on African cinema and its diasporas (black and Arab worlds, interculturalities).

Olivier Barlet was born in Paris on 4 October 1952. He graduated in 1976 from ESCP-EAP (alternative Studies in Paris, London and Düsseldorf). Initially a rural animator for the DECOR^[1] association, he taught translation and interpreting in Munich from 1985 to 1990, then became a literary agent and translated many books on Africa and African authors from German and English.

A member of the Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma, he wrote about cinema in the monthly magazines Africa international, Afrique-Asie and Continental as well as in the Letter des musiques et des arts Africans, before funding with a few colleagues the magazine Africultures in November 1997, of which he was editor-in-chief from 1997 to 2004, and where he published nearly 1800 articles on African cinema.^[2][3] He also wrote the cinema pages of the magazine Afriscope (2007-2017).

He was president of the Africultures association from 1997 to 2008 and then treasurer until 2016, before turning over to a younger team while remaining director of publications. As president or editor-in-chief, he has intervened in the public debate, notably on human zoos,^[4] the commemoration of the abolition of slavery,^[5] the intellectual movement^[6] and immigration issues.^[7]

For critic Jean-Michel Frodon, Olivier Barlet is “without doubt the best French (and therefore European) connoisseur of African cinema”.^[8] His books, translated into various languages, are indeed a reference.

Published in 1996, Les Cinemas d’Afrique noire: le regard en question, won the 1997 Prix Art et Essai from the Centre national de la Cinématographie.^[9] By its title, it suggests abandoning the expression “African cinema”, which it considers to confine these plural cinematographies to a genre. “It enlightens the reader on these cinemas without inviting them to a dramatic fascination for the themes they exploit”, says Gustave Boulou de B’béri.^[10] For as Christiane Passevant notes, “the perception of African cinema by Westerners can be summed up in the questioning go the gaze”.^[11]

In 2012, Olivier Barlet published a sum on the period 1996-2011: Les Cinemas d’Afrique des années 2000: perspectives critiques, proposing to “rethink the critical discourse on African cinema”,^[12] and to “formulate new bases for the criticism of African cinema”.^[13] According to Pierre Barrot, he analyses “three major trends of the past decade: the breakthrough of filmmakers with an immigrant background, the retreat of historical taboos and the affirmation of women”.^[14]

He participated in the creation of the African Federation of Film Critics in Tunis in 2004 and was its treasurer until 2009. He has also conducted dozens of workshops on criticism for journalists in various African countries.

He continues to publish reviews, analyses and interviews on the africultures.com,^[15][16] website, often translated into English in the American magazine Black Camera,^[17] as ell as in numerous international magazines and books. With the website afrimages.net, he publishes analyses of African films together with academics and critics.

From 1992 to 2018, together with Sylvie Chalaye, he directed the collection Images plurielles (cinema and theatre) at Editions L'Harmattan, Paris.

Since its creation in 2002, he has also participated in the programming and animation of the Festival des cinemas d’Afrique en pays d’Apt.^[18] He is also a programmer for the creative documentary platform Tënk.

At the Cannes Film Festival 2023, he received the Achievement Award for Film Critics awarded by the Arab Cinema Center.^[19][20]