Telling stories that shift us

Film festival director Mandisa Zitha fills us in on what audiences can expect and what makes an exceptional documentary

- Kibo Ngowi

What makes a great documentary? It's a deceptively simple question — one that has been floating around my mind for a while.

When I put it to Mandisa Zitha, the long-serving director of the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, she responds without hesitation: “I watch a lot of documentaries for my work; a lot, for months,” she says with a soft laugh. “But I can say, for me, personally, a good documentary is able to move me from where I am now to somewhere else.”

That “somewhere else” could be emotional, intellectual, spiritual.

Zitha describes the best documentaries as those that “shift you in a particular way, whether it’s a mind-set shift or creating awareness or having an emotional impact.”

It’s not about production budgets or running time. It’s about transformation. That response resonates deeply with me, as a writer. I tell Zitha that I’ve always believed that good books make you think, but great books change the way you think, and that surely, the same must be true for great documentaries.

She agrees. And it’s that kind of storytelling — the kind that lingers, that challenges, that awakens — that Zitha and her team have consistently sought to showcase during her 11 years at the helm of Encounters.

Now in its 27th edition, the festival returns this month with a slate of powerful films screening in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

And while Zitha resists picking favourites, she does offer a few highlights to look out for, including films that explore both familiar histories and lesser-known legacies.

One such title is Sam Nzima: A Journey Through His Lens, which comes to screens not long after the June 16 holiday.