German with Film Studies

German and film studies is a combination that uses two powerful analytical frameworks to explore culture, history, and the moving image. German as a degree subject takes you deep into one of Europe's most significant cultural and intellectual traditions, encompassing literature, philosophy, history, and contemporary society from the medieval period to the present. Film studies provides a critical and theoretical vocabulary for analysing cinema as an art form, an industry, and a social phenomenon.

Studied together, they open up the German-language film tradition, which includes some of the most celebrated and studied cinema in the world.

At University College London, this four-year full-time programme develops your German to an advanced level through sustained language study and engagement with a wide range of texts, from classic literary works to journalism and contemporary writing. In film studies, you will examine film form, genres, movements, and industries, developing the tools to analyse moving images with the same rigour you bring to written texts. The German dimension of film studies is particularly rich, including Expressionist cinema of the 1920s, the films of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and the substantial contemporary German film production.

The programme situates both German and film within their broader cultural and historical contexts, developing a genuinely interdisciplinary intellectual outlook.

Graduates from German and film studies go on to careers in arts and media organisations, film and television production, journalism, publishing, education, the civil service, and international business. German language proficiency opens doors in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, economies of considerable significance in Europe. The critical and analytical skills developed through both disciplines are widely applicable.

Many graduates pursue postgraduate study in film, German studies, European cinema, or related fields.