Encounters South African International Documentary Festival will return in June with one of its most internationally visible lineups in recent years, bringing Oscar-tipped titles, major festival winners, African premieres and four new South African features to audiences in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The festival’s 28th edition runs from 4 to 14 June 2026, with screenings, masterclasses, panels and Q&As. Festival director Mandisa Zitha frames the programme as a counterweight to the speed and volatility of the current media environment, describing Encounters as «an opportunity to slow down and look behind the headlines to better understand our world.»
Two titles recently named by Variety as early contenders for next year’s Best Documentary Oscar will receive African premieres at the festival. They are Sam Pollard’s TUTU, winner of the 2026 Berlin Peace Film Prize, and Nuisance Bear, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner about polar bears increasingly forced into human settlements as their Arctic habitat disappears.
TUTU is one of the festival’s headline events. The feature documentary offers an intimate portrait of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning cleric and anti-Apartheid figure whose public moral force was inseparable from humour, anger, faith and political courage. The film draws on a remarkable archive shot over two decades by South African journalist Roger Friedman and photographer Benny Gool, both interviewed in the film and credited as consulting producers. Pollard, whose credits include MLK/FBI, will attend the Encounters screenings and host editing masterclasses in Cape Town and Johannesburg with editor Paul Trewartha.
The opening night film is the African premiere of Zipporah Nyaruri’s Truck Mama, following Eva, a rare female truck driver on the Kenya-Sudan route, as she negotiates long-distance work, single parenting and economic independence. The film premiered at IDFA.
Encounters will also host the world premieres of four South African documentaries. Adrian Van Wyk and Chris Kets’ Notes from the Underground traces the history of Cape hip hop. Mmabatho Montsho’s Marxism & Period Pains examines period pain through class and gender politics. Pat van Heerden and Edwin Wes’ The Hour After Midnight investigates the death in detention of trade unionist Dr Neil Aggett during Apartheid. Elan Gamaker’s My Father’s Son follows a Jewish filmmaker meeting his Black brother from another mother for the first time over Zoom.
The broader programme includes the HotDocs Audience Prize winner American Doctor, the Sundance Civil Resistance Prize winner Everybody to Kenmure Street, Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, Alex Gibney’s Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, Amadou & Mariam: The Blind Couple From Mali, The Woman Who Poked the Leopard, Amilcar, Life After Siham and Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror. Across its selections, Encounters positions documentary as both witness and argument, turning global crisis into an invitation to look harder, stay longer and think beyond the news cycle.
Find more information on the full programme – HERE
