Tamara Maatouk is an assistant professor of film studies in the Department of the Arts at The American University in Cairo. She is a historian of the modern Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on film as an art form, an industry and a social practice.

Her first book, Understanding the Public Sector in Egyptian Cinema: A State Venture (CPSS, AUC Press, 2019; repr. 2023), examined the emergence, expansion and eventual decline of Egypt’s public film sector. Her current project, Filming Socialism, explores Egypt’s socialist sixties through the lens of cinema. She is also engaged in research on film as a vehicle of public history, and on its possibilities and limitations as a form of history.