Vet vannie Land

For Immediate Use

Africa’s leading documentary festival, Encounters returns for its 28th edition between 4-14 June 2026, with screenings, masterclasses, panels and Q&As in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.

This year’s short film lineup proves that less can be more. “Short documentaries are becoming more popular every year,” says Encounters festival director Mandisa Zitha. “They’re no longer just a career launchpad; they’re now some of the most inventive and urgent filmmaking happening today.”

“The City of Cape Town is pleased to once again stand behind Encounters, where documentaries continue to grow and real stories come to life,” says Alderman JP Smith, Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security. “This festival creates a powerful platform for voices that matter, both at home and across the globe. It is through this space that we celebrate the art of film, while building meaningful connections between communities, storytellers, and audiences alike.”

This year’s highlights include:
• Vet vannie Land, following botanist Pieter van Wyk and his fight to protect the Richtersveld and Succulent Karoo from international succulent poaching syndicates. It won three awards at Silwerskermfees, including Best Short Documentary
• Mama Micra, a stop-motion animation about the director’s unorthodox mother, who lived in palaces, under bridges, and in her car. It won Best Short at Full Frame and a Special Mention at IDFA, the world’s biggest documentary festival
• The Spectacle, which documents beautiful destinations – and their crowds of cellphone photographers. Director Yasmin van Dorp won the Full Frame President Award for Best Upcoming Filmmaker
• Voices from the Abyss, following a professional cliff-diving community in Mexico. It earned an Honourable Mention from the International Documentary Association

This year’s lineup includes shorts from award-winning African directors:
• Kurt Orderson, who won the Audience Award at Encounters for Not In My Neighbourhood, returns with Amigo The Griot, about a blind hip hop storyteller in Eersterivier
• Kenyan Sam Soko, who won at Sundance with Softie, co-directs One Last Order, about Sighle Williams’ last shift after 37 years at a Florida drive-thru. It won both the Jury and Audience awards at the Oscar-qualifying Aspen Shortsfest
• Sihle Hlophe won SAFTAs for Lobola, A Bride’s True Price and Lindela Under Lockdown. In Dear Sikhonkwane, she pays tribute to SiSwati author Sikhonkwane Mahlalela
• Teboho Edkins’ films have screened at Berlin and won at Oberhausen, one of the world’s most respected short film festivals. an open field is set in Ethiopia, where a father and son grieve their loss and find solace in the unique community, who have a cultural practice of grieving

This year’s films travel from the Iranian Green Movement Uprising (As I Lay Dying) to blackout-stricken Cuba (Sueña Ahora) to a Brazilian town where McDonald’s went bankrupt under a communist mayor (Olinda’s Golden Arches) to Jebba Street in Lagos, as seen through the eyes of street photographer turned filmmaker Kagho Idhebor (My Jebba Story).

South African creatives step into the spotlight in several films. In Inyembezi Zendoda, Lwanda Dlamini uses painting as therapy to process being brutally attacked and left for dead. In Just Because I’m a Street Kid, we get to know Shorty the Melville Poet, who’s published two volumes of poetry while living on the streets of Johannesburg. The Hands That Feed is a loving tribute to Decameron, an Italian restaurant in Stellenbosch. And Concerto follows Nina Schumann as she prepares to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at Woordfees while navigating focal dystonia (a neurological movement disorder) and Parkinson’s.

Other films explore innovation and older knowledge systems. In Bridging the Disconnect, Professor Pumela Msweli introduces a rural Eastern Cape community to the concept of “time banking” – where people exchange services using time rather than money. In Taste of the Land, urban growers Siwe Ntombela and Forest Ramushwana reclaim indigenous foodways in Johannesburg. In Broken Windows, residents confront crime by cleaning up Benoni. And in Eyes to See, a car accident shifts Dr. Yvette Abrahams towards her calling as a traditional healer.

This year’s feature-length highlights include Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Nuisance Bear, HotDocs Audience Prize winner American Doctor, Berlin winner TUTU, and opening night film Truck Mama. 

Full programme and tickets available at https://encounters.co.za.

Cinemas:
• Cape Town: The Labia Theatre, V&A Waterfront Ster-Kinekor, Bertha House Mowbray and Bertha Movie House in Khayelitsha
• Johannesburg: The Bioscope and Rosebank Nouveau, Ster-Kinekor Sandton and Ster-Kinekor Southgate

• Pretoria: Ster-Kinekor Brooklyn Commercial

Supported by:
Bertha Foundation, National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa, City of Cape Town, Film Cape Town, Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, Netflix, Consulate General of Portugal in Johannesburg, SWISS Films, Consulate General of Switzerland in Cape Town, German Films, German Documentaries, DOK.fest München, French Institute of South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, Central Film School, Ster-Kinekor, Clinix, The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, Rough Cut Lab Africa, South African Guild of Editors, University of Cape Town (UCT), UCT Center for Film and Media Services, Durban FilmMart Institute, filmmart.africa, Documentary Filmmakers Association of South Africa, University of the Western Cape (UWC), Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), Goethe Institut Johannesburg, Kamva Collective, CapeTalk, Modern Times Review, Politically Aweh 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Additional films to consider:
• A Place called Paradise, about a young couple who leave Cape Town for rural Suurbraak
• Before They Sold The Sky, which explores director Kai Reynolds’ family history and the impact of forced removals under Apartheid
• Bones, the story of Sara Baartman’s final repatriation to South Africa in 2002
• Curtain Call, which follows theatre actors and the drama before the curtain rises
• Die Lopende Ambulanse, about emergency first-aid responders in Merweville
• Her Khaltsha, about Khayelitsha’s first all-girls cycling group
• Brazilian short documentary Oops, I died, which follows a group of four children as they play an online multiplayer game
• Sonder, which explores Black Zulu queer masculinities in Johannesburg’s neglected inner-city hostels
• talking to Family, about a filmmaker returning to China after being changed by studying in Cape Town
• WAT WAS HIE?, a journey through Cape Town’s layered histories, where movement and memory reactivate landscapes marked by colonialism, slavery, and Indigenous resistance.
• When I Came to Your Door, about a woman searching for her partner among the ruins of a demolished neighbourhood in Addis Ababa