Ahmed Ragab - Creative Documentary Practice MFA

“Starting this MFA right after finishing my film degree, I was met with a lot of friends asking me why I want to spend more time studying film, saying that it's a waste of my time. But as a filmmaker who wants to specialize as a non-fiction storyteller, after years of working with different formats, I couldn't have found a better program to do so. Since day one, I have been motivated by one exercise after another to go out and explore the world through my camera and learn about all sides of non-fiction storytelling with an expanded point of view, and exactly the right balance between practice and theory. This has genuinely elevated the momentum of my development as a filmmaker as it keeps me fully aware of the bigger picture and contextualize my practice.

Living in London comes with a great advantage for a documentarian; if you throw a stone in any direction, it will probably hit a potential story that you can tell. London is a never-sleeping organic mega-metropolis, full of layers, topics and stories that are ready to tell, UCL resonates with me as a microcosm of London, full of opportunities and people from everywhere in the world covering a multitude of experiences and a broad range of disciplines in academia, always ready to connect and share.

Maintaining a healthy close distance to the market side of filmmaking was also one of my main priorities, which is carefully implemented within the program with it being part of Open City Docs, which runs one of the top documentary film festivals in the world and offers a year-long carefully curated program of screenings and masterclasses by leading film professionals.”