The Encounters South African International Documentary Festival has announced its official selection ahead of its 28th edition. Scheduled from the 4th to 14th of June, 2026, the festival has programmed African short and feature documentary projects made in, outside, and about Africa. The documentary projects ponder on the question of identity, sexuality and politics.
Encounters is a dedicated documentary festival concerned with screening contemporary South African and International features and short documentaries. The festival has screened 671 African titles, 633 International ones, and a total 2, 867 screenings with over 227,589 recorded attendees. The festival launched in 1999 as the Encounters Swiss South African Documentary Film Festival but during its second edition, in 2000, was renamed to Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival. Over the years, the festival has developed into Africa’s premier documentary festival and one of the oldest on the continent.
Its 2026 first short film line up official selection includes Kurt Orderson & Mario Laaistock’s Amigo The Griot, which follows a blind Afrikaaps hip-hop storyteller in Eersterivier who reconnects with his past through music. The documentary subjects weave memory, community, and survival into a rhythmic journey of feeling while reclaiming narrative power. Kai Reynolds’ Before They Sold the Sky is a moving look at how we attach narratives and memories to physical places. In the short doc, Reynolds tells his family history and the impact of forced removals under apartheid.
Nomandla Vilakazi’s Bones, from South Africa, tells the story of Baartman’s final repatriation to South Africa in 2002, catalysed by a 1998 poem, I’ve Come To Take You Home by writer and activist Diana Ferrus. Reshoketjwe Joyce Nkgapele’s Bridging the Disconnect is situated in the Eastern Cape. It follows Professor Pumela Msweli’s time banking initiative that helps a rural community confront water scarcity by transforming shared skills into a system of sustainable change.
Mohamed Amine Harboul’s Broken Windows is set in Benoni as communities confront crime and neglect by cleaning their environment, revealing how resilience found in collective action challenges cycles of violence, poverty, and institutional failure. Jurg Slabbert’s Concerto is a short doccie that accompanies pianist Nina Schumann as she prepares to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s a piece that she’s performed many times before, but this time it’s different. Teboho Edkins’ An Open Field is a French, German, South African, and Ethiopian co-production that contextualizes the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed the director’s brother. Edkins returns to the site, where grief, ritual, and landscape transform an open field into a living memorial.
Kyla Laing and Marise Schoonraad’s Curtain Call follows a group of young actors as they navigate the chaos, conflict, and camaraderie of a stage production. As the film reveals, the real drama unfolds long before the curtain rises. Sihle Hlophe’s Dear Sikhonkwane is a short tribute to SiSwati author, Sikhonkwane Mahlalela, whose life of teaching and writing becomes a portrait of language, memory, and cultural preservation through the lives of those he inspired. Leanne Brady’s Die Lopende Ambulanse is set in the remote town of Merweville. It’s a heartfelt short doccie that follows a group of emergency first-aid responders who care for sick patients while they wait for the ambulance to arrive.
Christian Haneem’s Eyes to See is a short documentary that follows Dr Yvette Abrahams after a life-altering accident as she embarks on a healing journey through Indigenous knowledge, reimagining queerness, nature, and identity as fluid, ancestral, and interconnected. Kiara Wales & Anke Spies’ The Hands That Feed is a tribute to the Stellenbosch restaurant Decameron, which has become a staple for anyone with a love of Italian food and tradition. It’s a tribute to the kitchen workers, from potato scrubbers to sous chefs, who make eating in a great restaurant one of life’s true pleasures.
Robyn Phillips’ Her Khaltsha is about the Khaltsha Cycling Academy, Khayelitsha’s first all-girls cycling group, which breaks binaries and finds freedom, independence, and sisterhood for these South African women. Mandlakazi Zilwa’s Inyembezi Zendoda introduces us to artist Lwanda Dlamini, who was brutally attacked and left for dead. Unable to discuss his trauma with his family, his canvases are the place where he finds resolution and healing. Faith Riyano’s Just Because I’m a Street Kid introduces the story of Shorty, the Melville Poet, a talented wordsmith who has published two volumes of poetry while living on the mean streets of Johannesburg.
Kagho Idhebor’s My Jebba Story is a black-and-white cinematic portrait of Lagos’ Jebba Street, where archival photographs and memory intertwine to reveal a shifting neighbourhood shaped by survival, creativity, and the act of seeing. Rae Human & Rudi Lippert’s A Place Called Paradise follows a young couple’s migration from Cape Town to rural Suurbraak, seeking belonging and healing as they embrace farming and community life, where love, nature, and time transform their sense of home. Thuthuka Sibisi’s Sonder explores Black Zulu queer masculinities shaped by surveillance, violence, and desire, where fragile performances of masculinity, intimacy, and survival are constantly negotiated.
Nondomiso Masache’s Taste of the Land is set in Johannesburg, where urban growers like Siwe Ntombela and Forest Ramushwana reclaim indigenous foodways, exploring how ancestral knowledge, ecological care, and urban cultivation reconnect land, memory, and community while shaping sustainable futures. Danielle McDonald & Konrad Helgard Raubenheimer’s Vet Vannie Land is a Richtersveld-set documentary which follows the collaboration between botanists and conservationists as they battle organised syndicates poaching rare succulents. It exposes a global black market threatening the biodiversity of one of the world’s most ancient ecosystems. Luke De Kock’s Wat Was Hie? is a journey through Cape Town’s layered histories, where movement and memory reactivate landscapes marked by colonialism, slavery, and Indigenous resistance, asking what was here and what remains.
For feature documentaries, Pat van Heerden & Edwin Wes’ The Hour After Midnight investigates the contested death of Dr Neil Aggett under apartheid detention, uncovering state surveillance, torture, and decades-long struggles for truth, justice, and accountability in South Africa. The documentary contextualizes the contested death of Aggett, a medical doctor and trade union organiser detained under apartheid South Africa’s Security Branch in 1982. Zipporah Nyaruri’s Truck Mama follows Evaline, a long-haul truck driver in East Africa, as she navigates dangerous roads and a male-dominated field while balancing motherhood and ambition, revealing the emotional cost of life on the road. The project is a Kenya, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Netherland production.
Yaseen J Khan’s Robots is set in Johannesburg’s busy intersections. A street performer, Gift, balances spectacle with survival as he navigates fatherhood, survival, and identity amid the fragile economy of the city’s margins. Andrew H. Brown & Bea Wangondu’s Kikuyu Land is set on Kenya tea plantations, it’s as if colonialism never ended. Kikuyu Land documents the attempt of one man to claim restitution for land that was taken from his family during the colonial period. Mmabatho Montsho’s Marxism and Period Pains features remarkably honest interviews with a cross-section of South African women. Marxism & Period Pain takes an in-depth look at women’s experiences of menstruation, locating those experiences within the gendered structures of capitalism.
Tshililo waha Muzila’s A Little Man From The Congo follows the director as he walks the Camino de Santiago in an orange life jacket, exposing Europe’s migrant crisis while reflecting on colonial legacies shaping Black identity across continents. Nicole Schafer’s Mama-Demic is set inside a South African maternity ward as a doctor balances motherhood and medical training, whilst confronting a collapsing health system, at the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jihan’s My Father and Qaddafi, a United States and Libyan co-production, sees a daughter reconstructing the disappearance of her father, Libyan diplomat Mansur Kikhia, uncovering a decades-long silence shaped by Qaddafi’s reign of political violence, in her search for truth and justice.
Elan Gamaker’s My Father’s Son follows two estranged South African brothers who meet online for the first time and, through Zoom calls. The documentary uncovered a shared past shaped by separation, trauma, and unexpected brotherhood. Adrian Van Wyk & Chris Kets’ Notes From the Underground features Cape Town’s hip hop talents, including Ready D, Isaac Mutant, and Mutant’s daughter, Lyrix. The documentary tells the history of Cape hip hop and its role in post-apartheid South Africa.
Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana tells the story of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, who recognised the extraordinary power of cinema as a tool for resistance and cultural change. Marjolijn Prins’ Fantastique, a Belgium, France, Netherlands, and Guinea co-production, is a magic-realistic documentary that follows the 14-year old contortionist Fanta in Guinea Conakry. Sam Pollard’s Tutu, a United States, United Kingdom, and South African co-production, is a portrait of Desmond Tutu, the rebel Archbishop who helped end Apartheid, changing the soul of a nation and inspiring generations worldwide. Patience Nitumwesiga’s The Woman Who Poked the Leopard is a Ugandan and German co-production that recounts the story of Ugandan poet and activist Stella Nyanzi’s relentless attempt to challenge the violent status quo of President Yoweri Museveni makes for gripping viewing.
The festival is now organised by the Encounters Training and Development Institute and has, through its programming, conversations, and panels, advanced the currency of documentaries in the country and region by supporting new productions and giving an African platform to international documentaries.
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