At the Encounters International Documentary Festival, films from South Africa and abroad illuminate urgent issues of land ownership, cultural identity and the power of music in resistance.
A polar bear must endure the shrinking of his icy habitat and navigate the land alongside modern human life. A journalist investigates Kenya's tea plantations, where the hands of imperialism seem to have never left. And a young hip-hop artist in Cape Town pieces together words of self-expression.
These are a few of the stories featured in the 2026 Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, which brings films from South Africa and Kenya, to Canada and the US into a cultural exchange of ideas, histories and messages.
While the festival presents narratives and filmmaking covering a spectrum of themes, the 28th edition of Encounters is anchored by its curation of documentaries that tackle matters of land ownership, reclamation of power and the question of belonging amid sociopolitical tensions.
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Humans as invasive species
It's not unusual for the existence of wild creatures in human-populated areas to be described as an infestation, invasive or a nuisance.
They are words that capture how some wildlife may inconvenience or threaten the daily lives of human beings, but they nevertheless cast certain species in antagonistic roles, often failing to acknowledge how humans ourselves have intruded upon and destructed natural habitats that were never ours to...
