Encounters Festival 2026: 15 Must-See Documentaries

The Encounters South African International Documentary Festival is back with over 50 compelling, important documentaries set to screen in selected cinemas and venues across Cape Town (and Johannesburg) from 4 to 14 June – many for the first time.

Here are 15 must-see South African and international films available for booking right now.

Tutu

Directed by Sam Pollard | United States, United Kingdom & South Africa | 2026 | 101 min

TUTU is a compelling portrait of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a man whose beliefs and principles are more relevant to us now than ever before. Made with remarkable access—thanks to filmmakers Roger Friedman and Benny Gool filming Tutu almost continuously for the last two decades of his life—the film documents his journey from childhood poverty to cleric to his fight against the apartheid state to ultimately being the de facto saint of contemporary South Africa.

The film does a remarkable job, not just of telling Tutu’s story and the broader narrative of South Africa, but in encapsulating its subject’s joy, resilience, and grace. Fueled by a heartfelt engagement and elevated by strong editing and a carefully considered soundtrack, the film is both a masterclass in the documentary biopic and a siren call for us all to embrace Tutu’s compassion and humble love for humanity.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via Webtickets (7 June) OR SK (7 & 13 June).

When: 7 June 2026, from 12.30pm & 4.30pm | 13 June 2026, from 5pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town | Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Notes from the Underground

Directed by Adrian Van Wyk & Chris Kets | South Africa | 2026 | 89 min

For the people of Cape Town’s Cape Flats, Hip Hop connects them to the region’s ancient energy while providing liberation from both the structures of apartheid South Africa and the neocolonialism that continues to define life in the city for many. Featuring some of Cape Town’s Hip Hop talent, including Ready D, Isaac Mutant, and Mutant’s daughter, Lyrix, this powerful documentary tells the history of Cape Hip Hop, which it uses as both the medium and the message. As one of the interviewees notes, “Hip Hop provided a space in post-apartheid South Africa for people to find each other after centuries of oppression”, an aspect that Notes From The Underground, with its collective archive of voices, memory, and street-corner culture, celebrates and explores in great depth.

Cost: R90 per person – Book via Webtickets (6 June) | Free – RSVP via the form for 7 June or 10 June.

When: 6 June 2026, from 6.30pm | 7 June 2026, from 2pm | 10 June 2026, from 3pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town | Bertha Movie House, No 8 Mzala Street, Ekuphumleni, Khayelitsha | Bertha House, 69 Main Rd, Mowbray, Cape Town

Tristan Forever

Directed by Tobias Nölle & Loran Bonnardot | Switzerland & Tristan da Cunha | 2026 | 90 min

Tristan da Cunha is the world’s most remote inhabited island. Located in the middle of the South Atlantic, the picturesque landmass has become something of a spiritual refuge for Loran Bonnardot, a doctor from Paris, who has never felt at home in his hometown. For more than 30 years, Loran has been visiting the island, and now, at the age of 50, he has decided to make the place his home and join the 200 or so residents. Loran packs up his life—including his piano—and relocates himself to Tristan. But before he can be granted permanent residency, he needs to earn the trust of the island’s residents and show that he has what it takes to survive there. Made with a poetic detachment that reflects Loran’s alienation and distance from the world, the film explores issues of belonging, identity, and community, along with the yearnings that fuel our dreams of Utopia.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via Webtickets.

When: 8 June 2026, from 6.30pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

My Father’s Son

Directed by Elan Gamaker | South Africa | 2026 | 56 min

In 2020, two estranged South African brothers—one Jewish, one Black—meet online for the first time and, through a series of Zoom calls, begin uncovering a shared past shaped by separation, silence, and unexpected brotherhood. My Father’s Son moves between present-day video calls and fragments of memory as the brothers piece together a history held in archive photographs, home videos, cassettes, and family stories.

What emerges is a fractured portrait of a father whose absence defined two parallel lives, shaped by apartheid’s racial divides, secrecy, and the complex realities of raising children across boundaries of race, class, and belonging. As they confront inherited narratives, gossip, and half-truths, their search for understanding becomes a reckoning with loss, identity, and the meaning of fatherhood. Across continents and screens, the brothers’ lost years reveal the complexities of connection as they heal from the legacy of a segregated country and a wounded family.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK.

When: 5 June 2026, from 8.30pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Marxism & Period Pains

Directed by Mmabatho Montsho | South Africa | 2025 | 75 min

Marxism & Period Pain takes an in-depth look at women’s experiences of menstruation, locating those experiences within the gendered structures of capitalism. Focusing on the lived experience of being a woman in a globalised economy that barely acknowledges women’s reproductive health, the film features remarkably honest interviews with a cross-section of South African women, including educators, medical professionals, and school students. They talk eloquently about how period pain is brushed over by male-dominated structures, with menstruation remaining a taboo subject in virtually all cross-gender conversations, from trade unions to corporate boardrooms.

The film’s clear but nuanced discussions are a timely reminder of the accuracy of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, regardless of attitudes to alternative economic models. In extending that analysis to women’s reproductive health in contemporary South Africa, director Mmabatho Montsho has made a hugely accessible film that engages with complexity without dumbing things down.

Cost: R90 per person – Book via SK (14 June) | Free – RSVP via the form for 6 June or 11 June.

When: 6 June 2026, from 4pm | 11 June 2026, from 3pm | 14 June 2026, from 3pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront | Bertha Movie House, No 8 Mzala Street, Ekuphumleni, Khayelitsha | Bertha House, 69 Main Rd, Mowbray, Cape Town

A Little Blackman From The Congo

Directed by Tshililo waha Muzilla | South Africa & Spain | 2025 | 92 min

South African filmmaker, Tshililo waha Muzila, undertakes a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain wearing an orange life jacket as a visible response to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. His journey echoes the reality that, according to the IOM, in 2019 alone, 87,315 migrants arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, while 62 died attempting the crossing, their stories dissolving into an unseen ocean. Along the route, he confronts the coded language of exclusion, where migrants are labelled Negrito Del Congo, revealing how European perceptions of African identity shape visibility, attitude and acceptance.

The journey parallels his experiences in South Africa, where xenophobia fractures communities and reveals similar patterns of denied Blackness shaped by economic strain, political failure, and inherited division. Between land and sea, Europe and Africa, the film becomes a global meditation on migration, colonial legacy, and contested Black identity. As Tshililo traces a restless search for dignity, the film exposes how survival and selfhood are negotiated in a world shaped by borders and erasure.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK.

When: 10 June 2026, from 6.30pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Mama-Demic

Directed by Nicole Schafer | South Africa | 2026 | 52 min

Inside the maternity ward of Harry Gwala Regional Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, a young doctor, Dr Ntinga, in specialist training, navigates a collapsing public health system while raising her own child. Mama-Demic offers rare observational access to the frontlines of maternal care during a period defined by crisis, uncertainty, and exhaustion. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is strained by staff shortages, underfunding, strikes, and limited resources that push medical workers beyond their limits. At the same time, social contributors such as rising teenage pregnancy linked to statutory rape, poverty and lack of education, place an increasing burden on both patients and caregivers.

Pursuing her ambition to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology, Dr Ntinga confronts systemic barriers alongside personal sacrifice, continually negotiating the demands of motherhood and medical duty. Mama-Demic offers an intimate portrait of women’s healthcare under pressure, revealing the resilience of medical staff, amid the human cost of care during a global health emergency.

Cost: R90 per person – Book via Webtickets (5 June) | Free – RSVP via the form (13 June).

When: 5 June 2026, from 6.30pm | 13 June 2026, from 1pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town | Bertha Movie House, No 8 Mzala Street, Ekuphumleni, Khayelitsha

Robots

Directed by Yaseen J Khan | South Africa | 2026 | 65 min

At Johannesburg’s busy intersections, where engines idle at red lights and traffic “robots” halt the city’s flow, another economy emerges. Dancers, traders, and performers step into these brief pauses, creating fleeting encounters that blur spectacle and survival. Among them is Gift, known as “Marshmallows,” whose striking “Headless Man” act captivates passersby while concealing the person beneath.

Away from the roadside, Gift’s life is shaped by fatherhood, identity, and the weight of survival. As financial strain, health complications and family responsibilities intensify, the fragile boundary between his public performance and private reality begins to strain under pressure. Robots explores the emotional terrain of those who inhabit these transient spaces, with dignity, faith and bravery, demanding to be recognised. In a city driven by constant motion, the film turns its gaze to what is often overlooked: the inner worlds of people who live and work in plain sight, navigating uncertainty, hope, and community on the margins.

Cost: Free. RSVP via the form.

When: 12 June 2026, from 6pm
Where: Bertha Movie House, No 8 Mzala Street, Ekuphumleni, Khayelitsha

Nuisance Bear

Directed by Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman | United States & Canada | 2026 | 89 min

Shot in the remote town of Churchill, Manitoba—known as the polar-bear capital of the world—this carefully considered film follows an adolescent bear who has been separated from his mother too early and becomes a nuisance to the local human population. As polar bears’ natural territory shrinks and the oceans warm, they are increasingly restricted to land rather than the ice they used to seasonally inhabit.

In this changed world, humans and bears no longer have the luxury of mostly leaving each other alone, as they have done for millennia. In the words of its Inuit narrator, Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, the bear is “a visitor from the past navigating a maze of the present”. But it’s not just the bears who are impacted by this schism in time. So too are the local Inuit populations who have to face the dangers of ‘nuisance bears’, while Western scientists and ecologists focus on helping the bear populations to increase.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK (11 June) or Webtickets (13 June).

When: 11 June 2026, from 8.30pm | 13 June 2026, from 4pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront | The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

Kikuyu Land

Directed by Andrew H. Brown & Bea Wangondu | Kenya | 2026 | 93 min

On the vast rolling tea estates of Kenya, it’s as if slavery and imperialism never ended. Which, for the women who pick tea leaves on the estates of Lipton and others—as well as those whose families used to own and tend the land before the advent of colonialism—is perilously close to the truth. The women have little agency, are not allowed to leave the farms, and are subject to the whims of the ‘field managers’, while those seeking redress through land claims find themselves subject to an endlessly bureaucratic process.

Kikuyu Land documents the attempt of one man to claim restitution for land that was taken from his family during the colonial period and which is now owned by multinational corporations. While the film offers few answers to counter the political weight of these companies, Kikuyu Land remains an illuminating look at how an entrenched exploitation of the poorest of the world’s poor is at the heart of the modern economy.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK (9 June) or Webtickets (14 June).

When: 9 June 2026, from 6.30pm | 14 June 2026, from 6.30pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront | The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

American Doctor

Directed by Poh Si Teng | International | 2026 | 93 min

This urgently relevant film documents the experience of three American doctors in Gaza during the still-ongoing onslaught in the region. Coming from three very different backgrounds—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—they find themselves caught between the moral imperative of being a doctor and the highly volatile politics surrounding their mission.

Set between Gaza and the doctors’ home cities, the film explores their attempts to bring sustained attention in America’s halls of power to the horrors taking place in Gaza—particularly the bombing of hospitals. The film is unflinching in its depiction of the violence that the war perpetrates on Palestinian bodies, while also showing—through the deep compassion and understanding of the three doctors—that another way is possible. Beyond its immediate subject, American Doctor also offers deep insights into the nature of complicity, propaganda, and the political mechanisms that support violence and war in the name of imperialism.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK.

When: 6 June 2026, from 8pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

A War on Women

Directed by Raha Shirazi | Iran & Italy | 2026 | 102 min

Across four decades of resistance, Iranian women have become a sustained political force challenging the theocratic rule of the Ayatollahs and leading the country’s pursuit of freedom. From the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, which ushered in mandatory veiling and sweeping restrictions on women’s rights, to the White Wednesdays campaign and the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death, the film traces an evolving lineage of defiance.

Through rare archival material and footage, alongside intimate testimonies, it follows seven women across generations whose lives as activists, exiles, and former prisoners reveal resilience shaped by feminism, courage, and solidarity under systems of enforced veiling and gender control. A War on Women frames the stories of women who imagine freedom in Iran, beyond control and exile, acting as mirrors to society and the collective experience of life under restriction, revealing the rise of a revolution in contemporary Iran and beyond its borders.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via SK.

When: 7 June 2026, from 7pm
Where: Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Before They Sold The Sky

Directed by Kai Reynolds | South Africa | 2025 | 26 min

Before They Sold the Sky is a moving look at how we attach narratives and memories to physical places, and the hold that those places have on us, even long after we have left them. Telling the story of director Kai Reynolds’ family history, this poetic film provides a highly personal alternative history of Cape Town over the last century, from the dark days of apartheid’s forced removals to the city’s current status as both a playground for the rich and the world’s most unequal city.

Reynolds’ grandparents and great-grandparents had lived in Walmer Estate and District Six, from where they were removed by the apartheid state. In an attempt to try to understand what had been lost, the director visits the physical sites where their homes had been. As the film clearly shows, geography and cartography are about more than mere expressions of power. If we use the right tools, there is much that they can reveal.

Before They Sold The Sky is part of the ‘Unlearning the Script’ block of short documentaries.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via Webtickets.

When: 7 June 2026, from 6.30pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

Her Khaltsha

Directed by Robyn Phillips | South Africa | 2025 | 8 min

Freedom takes shape on wheels in Khayelitsha, where a group of young girls come together as Khaltsha Cycling Academy, the first all-girls cycling collective, building a powerful sisterhood while challenging stigma, reclaiming public spaces, and redefining what is possible in their community. Through intimate interviews, Her Khaltsha follows their journeys as cyclists navigating a world shaped by inequality, crime, and deeply rooted gender expectations.

For these riders, cycling becomes a means of self-expression, therapy, and escape, offering mental clarity, joy, and release from daily pressure. Against fears of harassment, theft, and dangers faced by women in South Africa, they confront the belief that “bikes are for boys.” Stories of hope, independence, and determination unfold as they dream beyond their circumstances toward professional cycling, travel, and futures shaped by choice. Balancing vulnerability with determination, Her Khaltsha captures courage, connection, and community, as young women unapologetically carve out space for themselves, on the road and in the world.

Her Khaltsha is part of the ‘Where We Gather’ block of short documentaries.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via Webtickets.

When: 14 June 2026, from 2.30pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

Eyes To See

Directed by Christian Haneem | South Africa | 2025 | 14 min

Set against unbound wilderness, Eyes to see embarks on a contemplative journey through identity, culture, and Indigenous knowledge systems, revealing manifold expressions of queerness within the natural world. Through the lived experience of Dr Yvette Abrahams, the film follows how a 2018 car accident fundamentally alters her relationship to body and thought, opening a shift away from her former life and toward a calling as a traditional healer.

Over years of recovery, she undergoes a re-learning of perception, where healing unfolds as a decolonisation of knowledge itself, no longer fixed in colonial abstraction, but lived, sensed, and relational. Within this transformation, identity emerges as a continuum—where gender and sexuality are not fixed but fluid, and understood as embedded in land, species, and survival systems beyond colonial categorisation. Between vignettes, water and wilderness interweave as a living archive and ritual space, holding memory, presence, and transformation. Eyes to see invites viewers into nature’s rhythm, fostering deep introspection, attunement, and self-discovery within expanded ways of seeing.

Eyes to see is part of ‘The Body Remembers’ block of short documentaries.

Cost: R90 per person. Book via Webtickets (6 June) OR SK (14 June).

When: 6 June 2026, from 4pm | 14 June 2026, from 7pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town | Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront, Dock Road, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront