• Oscar-winning Edward Snowden doc to open Encounters
• Featuring festival winners from Cannes, SXSW, Toronto, and Venice
• Featuring some of the most talked-about international documentaries, including Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
• Award-winning South African documentaries from Francois Verster & Ryley Grunenwald, and world premières

CitizenFour, Laura Poitras’s Oscar-winning documentary about whistleblower Edward Snowden, will open the 17^th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, running from 4-14 June 2015 in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Poitras won the Pulitzer in 2014 for her role in helping Snowden expose the widespread abuses of America’s National Security Administration. CitizenFour is a first-person, fly-on-the-wall account of breaking the story of the decade, a real-life thriller unfolding minute-by-minute before our eyes.

Snowden disturbingly warns: “Know that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cellphone tower you pass, friend you keep, site you visit, every subject line you type, are in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not.”

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL WINNERS & FAVOURITES

Entertainment Weekly hailed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck as the best film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, while Rolling Stone called the authorised documentary of the Nirvana front man “the most intimate rock doc ever.”

The Salt of the Earth is an exquisite visual ode to Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed by his son Juliano, and his friend, legendary film-maker Wim Wenders. Nominated for an Oscar in 2015, it also won the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize in Cannes, among other honours.

The Look of Silence is Joshua Oppenheimer’s companion piece to his Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing. Winner of 16 international awards, including in Venice and SXSW, this follow-up on post-genocide Indonesia trails an optometrist who confronts his brother’s murderers in a country that never had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and where the murderers remain in power. Twitch hailed The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing as “perhaps the most important documentary project of the 21st century.”

WORLD PREMIÈRES & AWARD-WINNING SOUTH AFRICAN DOCUMENTARIES

Produced by South African Steven Markovitz and directed by Sudan’s Hajooj Kuka, Beats of the Antonov won the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award and was hailed as a “true standout” by Variety. A testimony to the power of music to hold a community together, The Beats of the Antonov is a window into the world of the resilient Sudanese farmers, herders and rebels of the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, who defiantly continue to tend their lands and celebrate their heritage in the face of government air raids.

The Dream of Shahrazad, the latest from Emmy winner Francois Verster, looks at the recent revolts in Egypt and Turkey through the lens of the famous story collection, The 1001 Nights. The Dream of Shahrazad is the first South African film to screen in the prestigious Masters programme of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

The Shore Break, directed by SAFTA-winner Ryley Grunenwald, is the story of two Pondo cousins from a close-knit rural community who have opposing plans for their homeland on South Africa’s West Coast. It’s a story of eco-tourism versus mining, and of the South African government versus the Pondo king and queen. The Shore Break screened in competition at IDFA and was named the Best Documentary at the 2015 International Environmental Film Festival (FIFE) in Paris.

Encounters will also host the world première of Wild Dog and Mrs Heart, the new film from festival favourite Riaan Hendricks, whose The Devil’s Lair opened Encounters two years ago. Wild Dog is a tender observational film about two inspectors from Animal Welfare Helderberg, who dare to care despite having to euthanise healthy dogs and cats every day.

DIVERSE DOCUMENTARIES FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE

Other films in the exciting Encounters line-up include :

• the award-winning Approaching The Elephant, an observational film about the launch of the Teddy McArdle Free School in New Jersey, America, where classes are voluntary and rules created by democratic vote;
• the award-winning Pixadores, about Brazilian graffiti artists from the slums who both fascinate and flummox the Berlin Biennale;
• Coming of Age, Teboho Edkins’ picturesque ode to youth, set in the snow-capped Lesotho mountains;
• Michael Madsen’s The Visit, a unique documentary about an event that has never taken place – humanity’s first encounter with intelligent life from space;
• Stanley Nelson’s definitive Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution;
• Between The Devil and The Deep, about the death of an alleged perlemoen smuggler in Hawston, near Hermanus;
• The Siren of Faso Fani looks at the causes responsible for a textile factory closing in Burkina Faso, through the eyes of the community affected. The Hollywood Reporter called it a “tragic tale of globalization and its discontents, though one with the promise of a happy ending.”;
• El Gort focuses on hay truck workers criss-crossing a post-revolutionary Tunisia where not enough has changed.

MORE TO COME

Africa’s most prestigious documentary festival runs from 4-14 June 2015 in Cape Town and Johannesburg.  Keep an eye on 2014.encounters.co.za for updates and the final programme.

Encounters is made possible through the support of the National Film and Video Foundation South Africa, Bertha Foundation, WESGRO and HCI Foundation.

Watch and embed the trailers:

Citizenfour – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IBWbpJdRMQ

The Salt of the Earth – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OivMlWXtWpY

The Look of Silence – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_ZHAs4M9k

The Shore Break – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZKmWRvWjiI

The Dream of Shahrazad –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB72dFwQ7JY

Wild Dog and Mrs Heart – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_72gwWgyhGI

Beats of the Antonov – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K797ysGoAt4

Approaching the Elephant – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdGIkBSkEdc

Pixadores – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-dDNkq0jg

Coming of Age – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2n47_Awqqk

The Visit – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A8MrCOozFo

Black Panthers – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeAsxK7PRa0

Between the Devil and the Deep – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFcFi0aMbF0

The Siren of Faso Fani – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of8IUu9-BB4

El Gort – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O2fMgc18Lg

The post Africa’s top documentary festival announces first films appeared first on Encounters Documentary Festival.

Unearthed, winner of the 2014 Audience Award for Best South African Film

CALL FOR ENTRIES DEADLINE EXTENDED

The organisers of Encounters South African International Documentary Festival are calling for entries from South African and international filmmakers for the 17th edition of the festival, which will run from 4-14 June 2015 in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Due to the extraordinary number of entries Encounters has decided to charge a nominal submission fee of USD15. African filmmakers are exempt.

Awards:
• Audience Award for Best South African Film
• Audience Award for Best International Film

Extended deadline for submissions:
• 31 March 2015

Please note that we will be pleased to consider works in progress / rough cuts if your film will be ready in time for the festival itself.

SUBMIT YOUR DOCUMENTARY

Want to submit a film? African or South African documentaries, click here. International documentaries, click here. 

Best regards,
The Encounters Team
Tel: +27 21 465 4686
Fax: +27 21 461 6964

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1994 – The Bloody Miracle

DIRECTOR: Meg Rickards & Bert Haitsma | South Africa | 2014 | 90min

As we celebrate South Africa’s twenty-years-young democracy, it’s easy to forget how the miracle of the rainbow nation could have just as easily never happened. Rewind to 1994 to a country on the brink of civil war: Chris Hani had just been assassinated, the AWB was mustering it’s forces, a proposed military coup was being plotted between unlikely allies and the country burned with inter-racial and inter-party violence. The conflict seemed certain to derail the already fraught discussions between Nelson Mandela’s negotiators and the outgoing apartheid government. A free and fair election seemed impossible. For the first time, victims, bystanders, key-players and conspirators are brought together in a new truth commission, a forensic examination of our remarkable present. But more than anything, 1994 – The Bloody Miracle reminds us just how crucial it is to understand our history if we are ever to move forward into an enlightened future.

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Yellow Fever

DIRECTOR: Ng’endo Mukii | Kenya | 2013 | 7min

In the award-winning Yellow Fever, Mukii combines vivid animation, interviews and battle-like choreography in tackling the African phenomenon of skin-bleaching and what it reveals about the globalising continent’s notions of race, femininity, self-image and self-worth.
Screens with Concerning Violence

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To the One I Love

DIRECTOR: Zolani Ndevu South Africa | 2013 | 23min

Filmmaker Ndevu is on a search for his absent father who left their family home when he was but one month old. Tracing his roots to the Eastern Cape, the ethical lines between son and filmmaker begin to blur, with Nedvu pulling no punches in this unorthodox, powerful local tragedy.
Screens with The Iranian Film

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