South Africa’s Stage for Urgent Cinema
Encounters 2025 Explores Power, Memory, and Resistance Through Film
The 27th edition of the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival kicks off today in Johannesburg and Cape Town, running through 29 June 2025. With a programme of over 40 films from around the world, this year’s festival arrives under the urgent banner: “the world has never been this desperate to be documented.” Exploring themes at the intersection of activism, technology, memory, and power, Encounters 2025 positions itself as both a cinematic experience and a civic intervention. We’re proud to partner with the festival this year and will be sharing reflections from several emerging Africa-based writers throughout the week, thanks to the support of Durban FilmMart SA. Stay tuned for perspectives on films that confront the most pressing social, political, and environmental questions of our time.
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News
Encounters 2025 Documentary Festival announces provocative lineup for a world in crisis
Films
Anselm
Director: Wim Wenders
Experience the captivating world of Anselm Kiefer in 3D and through the eyes of Wim Wenders, where film and painting seamlessly intertwine.
Capturing Water
Director: Rehad Desai
As Cape Town nears disaster, activists fight water cut-offs in a story about governance, climate, and social justice.
How to Build a Library
Director: Maia Lekow, Christopher King
Efforts to renovate Kenya’s historic libraries reveal how fragile democracies manipulate cultural spaces for control, suppression, and neocolonial interests.
Intercepted
Director: Oksana Karpovych
Contrasting quiet Ukrainian life compositions with intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families.
Mr Nobody Against Putin
Director: David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin
How a small-town teaching assistant became an unlikely whistleblower on the grim reality of wartime propaganda.
Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk
Director: Sepideh Farsi
Another journalist killed… but this time in the spotlight of the Cannes Film Festival.
The Tree of Authenticity
Director: Sammy Baloji
Through evocative imagery and sound, The Tree of Authenticity challenges colonial legacies in the Congo Basin, giving the forest agency beyond human-dominated histories.
Yalla Parkour
Director: Areeb Zouaiter
Creating an identity among the ruins of Gaza.
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