African music documentaries to shine at Encounters Documentary Festival

3 minutes read

Two notable African music documentaries you should definitely watch will be screened at Encounters South African International Documentary Festival in June 2026.

Here’s the scoop!

Amadou & Mariam – The Blind Couple From Mali | African premiere

This intimate film chronicles the career of Malian musical couple Amadou and Mariam, whose joyfully infectious music has made them one of Africa’s most successful musical exports.

Malian musicians Amadou and Mariam are one of Africa’s most successful pop exports. The married couple, both of whom lost their sight as young children, have performed to audiences all over the globe, spreading their unique brand of infectious joy and attracting the attention of some of the pop world’s leading musicians.

That same joy imbues this intimately made film, which chronicles the course of their career over the last five decades. Sadly, Amadou died in 2025 at the age of 70 as we learn in the first few minutes of the film, but the couple’s songs live on. A powerful testament to music’s transcendent, unifying power. The film also looks at Mali’s troubled political landscape, which has, in the past decade, been significantly fractured by the arrival of jihadists, whose first steps towards entrenching social control included banning music, a particularly radical proposition given its centrality to Malian life.

Interviews include Damon Albarn and Manu Chao, who reflect on their collaborations with Amadou & Mariam, as well as Chris Martin, who explains why he asked them to open for Coldplay. “We were almost intimidated by how good they were,” he admits.

Notes from the Underground | World premiere

An oral history of Cape Town’s Underground Hip Hop movement, passed on through the generations from the 1980s to the present day.

For the people of Cape Town’s Cape Flats, Hip Hop connects them to the region’s ancient energy. It provides liberation from both the structures of apartheid South Africa and the neocolonialism. These structures that continue to define life in the city for many. The doccie features some of Cape Town’s Greatest Hip Hop talents. 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.” This is an aspect that Notes From The Underground, with its collective archive of voices, memory, and street-corner culture, celebrates and explores in great depth.

More about Encounters South African International Documentary Festival

Africa’s leading documentary festival, Encounters returns for its 28th edition between 4-14 June 2026. Screenings, masterclasses, panels and Q&Aswill be hosted in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Other highlights this year include:

TUTU, winner of the 2026 Berlin Peace Film Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning rebel cleric

Nuisance Bear, winner of the 2026 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. A polar bear encroaching on human settlements as its Arctic habitat disappears

HotDocs Audience Prize winner 2026. – American Doctor, following three US doctors – a Palestinian, a Jew and a Zoroastrian – working in Gaza during the genocide

Sundance Civil Resistance Prize winner 2026. – Everybody to Kenmure Street. This documents a Glasgow community uprising to stop the deportation of two neighbours

Cinema Eye nominee 2026. –The Eyes of Ghana, about Chris Hesse, cinematographer to Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. It’s directed by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot

Encounters will run from 4-14 June 2026 at the following venues. The Labia Theatre, V&A Waterfront Ster-Kinekor CPT, and the Bertha House Mowbray and Bertha Movie House in Khayelitsha.

Also catch it at The Bioscope, Rosebank Nouveau, Ster-Kinekor Sandton, Ster-Kinekor Southgate in Jozi and Brooklyn Commercial in Pretoria.