Film Studies and Arabic
Film studies and Arabic is a distinctive combination that opens two quite different windows onto culture, meaning, and the world. Film studies is the academic examination of cinema as art, industry, and cultural form, asking how moving images are constructed, how they produce meaning, and how they reflect and shape the societies that make and watch them. Arabic, one of the world's great languages, is spoken by hundreds of millions of people across the Middle East and North Africa and carries a rich literary, philosophical, and religious heritage stretching back more than a millennium.
Studied together, these subjects offer unusual breadth, connecting you to both a global visual medium and one of the most geopolitically significant language regions on earth.
This four-year full-time programme at the School of Oriental and African Studies includes a foundation year, which builds the linguistic, critical, and cultural knowledge you need before moving into the main degree. SOAS is uniquely placed to offer this combination, with specialist expertise in the languages, cultures, and histories of the Middle East and Africa alongside strong provision in the study of film and visual media from non-Western perspectives. You will develop Arabic to a high level, studying the language alongside the literature and culture of Arabic-speaking societies, while film studies will develop your skills in critical analysis, close reading of visual texts, and engagement with film theory and history.
Graduates combine linguistic expertise with analytical and creative skills, making them well suited to careers in journalism, international media, documentary filmmaking, television production, broadcasting, translation and interpreting, diplomacy, development organisations, and cultural institutions. The ability to engage with Arabic-language media critically is particularly valuable in broadcasting, foreign affairs, and international organisations. Postgraduate study in film, Arabic studies, Middle Eastern studies, media, or translation is also a natural direction for those wanting to specialise further.