Documentary Film Ethics in the Saudi Arabian Context

Abstract

This thesis empirically investigates documentary ethics in Saudi Arabia by exploring how Saudi filmmakers understand and respond to ethical issues in documentary films. In such an evolving film industry, the lack of ethical guidelines provides a unique context to examine documentary ethics by drawing on the filmmakers’ perceptions and experiences. Utilising the grounded theory methodology to code and analyse 24 semi-structured interviews with the filmmakers and three focus group interviews with Saudi media experts, the themes and concepts that emerged from the analysed data were combined with textual analysis of selected Saudi Arabian documentary films. This thesis contributes to the growing field of documentary ethics by discussing the empirical findings within the Western ethical frameworks to enhance our understanding of global media ethics and to inform new ethical guidelines for Saudi Arabian filmmakers.