‘6 Kings and 6 Queens’ rein at Encounters Fest

6 Kings and 6 Queens explores the intense contest for the Modjadji Rain Queen’s throne in the Balobedu Kingdom, a matriarchal monarchy led by women for over 200 years.

The South African film, directed by Molatelo Bossman, is part of the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. The event features documentaries from over 40 countries. It is taking place at the Labia Theatre and V&A Waterfront Ster-Kinekor in Cape Town, and The Bioscope and The Zone @ Rosebank in Johannesburg from 19 to 29 June 2025.

For over two centuries, the Balobedu Kingdom in SA has been led by female monarchs known as the Rain Queens. However, upon the passing of Queen Modjadji IV in 2005, a question of succession emerged. 6 Kings and 6 Queens chronicles the fierce succession battle within the Balobedu Kingdom between Queen Masalanabo Modjadji, the rightful heir, and her brother, Prince Lekukela Modjadji.

With the royal family and council divided over the rightful heir, tensions grow around the involvement of Dr Mathole Motshekga. As the guardian of Masalanabo after her mother’s death, he faces accusations of attempting to claim the throne for his own interests. Drawing on years of footage, from coronations and rainmaking rituals to court battles, the film examines a political legacy under pressure.

6 Kings and 6 Queens falls into the festival’s theme ‘Agency – Standing up to Power’, one of five thematic collections shaping this year’s Encounters programme. In its 27th year, Encounters presents documentaries that examine global power structures, with filmmakers focusing on figures such as Vladimir Putin, Omar al-Bashir, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and developments in artificial intelligence. The selection highlights stories of individuals addressing femicide, defending indigenous land, challenging corporate influence, and shaping cultural and social change.

“In 2024, Encounters presented three of the five documentaries later nominated for Oscars, including the winner No Other Land,” says Mandisa Zitha, director of Encounters. “This year we’re raising the bar even higher with an excellent selection of films that speak to the role of the documentary and impact filmmaker in 2025.”

The festival opened with How to Build a Library directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher King which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. The film follows Angela Wachuka and Shiro Koinange as they embark on an ambitious project to restore a colonial-era library in Nairobi. Their vision is both inspiring and inclusive, aiming to transform the space into a vibrant hub for the community.

The film captures their challenges, from navigating political interference to bridging gaps with long-standing library staff who feel marginalised in the process. Through this journey, the documentary explores the complex intersections of colonial legacy, education, and civic agency, offering a nuanced reflection on the power and limitations of grassroots change.

The frightening reality of now

The theme ‘The Frightening Reality of Now’ captures a world in flux, marked by war, climate collapse, and rapid technological change that remains poorly understood. Rather than descend into alarmism, these films engage with the deeper implications of a world transforming faster than many can comprehend.

Shifting Baselines (Canada), directed by Julien Elie, uses a real-life parable unfolding in a small Texan town. As swamps are drained, beaches closed, and residents bought out to make way for SpaceX launch facilities, the film weighs Musk’s ambitions against the lasting consequences of his rapid space expansion.

The Thinking Game, directed by Greg Kohs (USA), looks into the development of AI. Scientist Demis Hassabis, a Time’s 100 most influential people of 2025, and his team strive to crack artificial general intelligence.

Intercepted, directed by Oksama Karpovych (Canada, France, Ukraine), tracks conversations between Russian soldiers and their families seized by Ukrainian intelligence.

The Tree of Authenticity, directed by Sammy Baloji (Belgium, Democratic Republic of Congo), is a film essay on the DRC’s colonial history and its ecological significance. There are three narrators; Paul Panda Farnansi the first black civil servant who recounts his experience in the Congo and Belgium during WW1, Albiron Beinaert a Flemish researcher based in the Congo Basin, and Lileko a 300-year-old tree.

Ways of learning

The theme ‘Ways of Learning’ focuses on wonderfully distinct aspects of education. The Shadow Scholars (UK), Brief Tender Light (USA), Fitting in (South Africa), and Mothers of Chibok (USA, Australia, Nigeria), deal respectively with the empowerment, commodification, cultural relativism, elitism, and gatekeeping of knowledge. They reveal access to information as a pivotal engine that drives societal structure.

In Eloise King’s  The Shadow Scholars (UK), professor Patricia Kingori of Oxford University travels to Kenya to find out more about the academic writing industry. She finds thousands of educated and technically adept but underemployed Kenyan graduates who are part of Essay Mills, writing essays, exam papers,  PhD thesis and other academic assignments for students at leading universities in the global north.

In Brief Tender Light (USA),directed by Arthur Musah, a Ghanaian alum follows a group of ambitious African students from Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria and Zimbabwe at the elite MIT as they strive to become positive agents back home.

Fitting in, directed by Fabienne Steiner (South Africa), focuses on the  diverse experience of young South Africans as they begin their studies at the select former Afrikaans university, Stellenbosch.

Mothers of Chibok, directed by Joel “Kachi” Benson (Nigeria), focuses on mothers ten years after Boko Haram terrorists abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, who fight to educate their remaining children.  They toil and suffer, driven by a deep belief that education is the path to a better life.

Agency – standing up to power

The largest collection of documentaries falls under the theme ‘Agency – Standing up to Power’. Here, individuals who face persecution in daily life are celebrated onscreen, as these impact-driven films highlight defiance, resilience, and quiet courage.

Mr Nobody Against Putin, directed by David Borenstein and Pasha Talankin (Denmark, Czech Republic), follows an event organiser and videographer in a small-town school in Russia who secretly documents the disturbing  transformation of the school into a war recruitment centre during the invasion of Ukraine.

The Blue Road,directed by Sinaed O’Shea (Ireland, UK), explores the extraordinary life of writer Edna O’Brien who, in 1960, wrote a sexually frank debut novel The Country Girl and became a literary sensation but became known as the woman who scandalised Catholic Ireland.  She led a turbulent life, had numerous affairs, and mixed with the glitterati. She died at 93 having written 34 fiction and non-fiction books.

Union, byBrett Story and Stephen Maing (USA), follows a group of former and current Amazon workers who, up against one of the world’s most powerful companies, begin an unprecedented campaign to unionise their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

Capturing Water, directed by Rehad Desai (SA), uncovers the social, political, and environmental challenges at the crux of the ongoing water crisis in Cape Town.

The Brink of Dreams follows four teenage women in southern Egypt who form a feminist street theatre troupe challenging social norms and spark conversation around gender equality. The film by directors Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir is a sympathetic study of their most pivotal choices.

Womxn: Working, directed by Shanelle Jewnarain (South Africa), engages with a group of fearless women activists waging a battle to decriminalise sex work against the backdrop of SA’s femicide crisis.

In Khartoum, five protagonists’ stories intertwine as they navigate the dangerous landscape of their war-torn Sudan. It is directed by Ibrahim Snoopy, Ahmad Timeea Mohamed, Amad Rewia Alhagi, Philip Cox, and Anas Saeed (Germany, UK, Sudan, Qatar).

Normal To Me, directed by Luke Sharland (SA), intimately explores the lives of people with special needs all employed at a protective workshop in the seaside town of Fish Hoek, Cape Town.

Two films highlight local communities standing up to authority. Yintah, directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell, and Michael Toledano (Canada), focuses on the Witsuwit’en people living on unceded territory as they resist the construction of municipal pipelines. Where Zebus Speaks French, directed by Nantenaina Lova (Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Germany, France), examines the struggle of subsistence rice paddy farmers in Madagascar to retain their land amid a presidential development project involving Chinese interests and the military.

YUMI (Vanuatu, Fiji, USA, UK, Egypt, Netherlands), directed by Felix Golenkoi, tells the inspiring story of law students who set out from the University of the South Pacific as part of a movement to take climate change to the International Court of Justice through the United Nations to save their home islands from extinction.

Memory, Trauma and Identity

The theme ‘Memory, Trauma and Identity’ gathers personal and political reckonings of the residue of the past that lingers in the present, within the minds, within the family, within the nation. Healing inherited trauma, confronting loss, or reclaiming erased histories, memory is both burden and balm in these threads of heritage.

Albie: A Strange Alchemy, directed by Sara de Gouveia (SA), celebrates the 90th birthday of the renowned Judge Albie Sachs charting his journey from civil rights lawyer and struggle hero to Justice of the Constitutional Court.

Matabeleland, directed by Nyasha Kadandara (Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana), meditates on the role of ritual in grief through its endearing protagonist Chris Nyathi, who is convinced that the chaos in his multiple splintered families stems from the unresolved death of his father at the hands of Mugabe’s regime.

In Kethiwe Ngcobo’s And She Didn’t Die (SA), a daughter traces her mother’s  journey from apartheid activist to feminist writer showing how storytelling became both  inheritance and revolution.

Kabul Chaos looks at four years when David Martinon, the current French Ambassador to South Africa, was Ambassador to Afghanistan (2018-2021) and was in charge on 15 August 2021 when the Taliban took Kabul. Martinon was the last foreign diplomat to leave Kabul, and he wrote a book about this experience. The film is directed by Thomas Brémond, David Périssère, Nils Montel and Myriam Weil (Afghanistan).

Filmmaker Gaël Kamilindi embarks on a quest in Didy (Rwanda, Switzerland, France), chronicling his return to Rwanda to uncover the story of his late mother. Having grown up in Switzerland, detached from his roots, the retracing of his mother’s life through the voices of women who knew her.

Director Areeb Zuaiter revisits Gaza and experiences her homeland through the eyes of Ahmed Matara, a parkour athlete, in Yalla Parkour (Gaza, Palestine).

In Abo Zabaal 89 (Egypt), filmmaker Bassam Mortada confronts the legacy of his parents’ political activism marked by his father’s imprisonment, and emotional estrangement – as he pieces together their story in a quest for truth, reconciliation and healing.

Art and Impact

The ‘Art and Impact’ theme frames the inherent ability of the arts to document injustice, shift culture, and move people to action.

The Walk, directed by Tamara Kotevska (UK, US, Macedonia), documents the extraordinary journey taken by Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet created by Cape Town’s Handspring Puppet Company representing millions of child refugees, embarked on an 8,000km journey across Europe to raise awareness of this human tragedy.

Director Nhlanhla Mthethwa’s (SA) Sam Nzima: A Journey Through His Lens examines the work of Sam Nzima, the photographer who took the iconic picture of Mbuyisa  Makhabo carrying the body of the dying 12-year-old activist Hector Pietersen on June 16th, 1976.

Auteur Wim Wenders’s Anselm (Germany) is an immersive documentary about Anselm Kiefer is one of the world’s greatest contemporary artists touted as a filmic gift for art lovers.

Misty: The Erroll Garner Story, directed by Georges Gachot (Switzerland, France, Germany), follows self-taught American jazz pianist Erroll Garner, a peer-recognised genius who forever changed the genre.

* For the full schedule of films, and to buy tickets, visit the website Encounters here.