This article describes a project titled Mapping Contemporary Cinema (MCC) that forms part of the final year undergraduate curriculum in a film studies programme at a UK Russell Group university. The project is a distinct and innovative synthesis of critical pedagogy with research-based learning and is here considered in the light of Gert Biesta's educational thinking. The article first glosses the concepts of critical pedagogy and research-based learning, and how they relate to Biesta's work. There follows a description of the setting up of the project and an account of its development and execution between 2011 and 2017; this description continues to call on Biesta and is interspersed with discussion of practical and theoretical issues stemming from the blending of the two approaches. The article concludes that critical pedagogy and research-based learning are complementary and share commonalities, especially a concern with generative learning.