encounters ster-kinekor doc film

After a three-year hiatus, the 4th Ster-Kinekor Encounters Youth Experience (EYE) Award for the Best South African Short Film returns to Encounters South African International Documentary Festival and the cinema chain Ster-Kinekor. Encounters, now in its 25th year, is Africa’s premier documentary festival, attracting documentary fans in Johannesburg and Cape Town over a ten-day in-person and online event. Encounters features South African productions as well as the best of what the rest of the world has to offer.

The Ster-Kinekor EYE Award honors both emerging and established filmmakers and provides them with a platform to showcase their abilities. The winning filmmakers will receive cash prizes to help them with future projects. The first-place winner will receive R10,000, while the second-place winner will receive R5,000. Both films will be shown at the festival’s closing weekend awards ceremony.

“The Youth Jury will serve as an inclusive mechanism… encouraging them to actively participate in the process of the festival, promoting film literacy and local documentaries to new viewers,” enthuses Festival Director, Mandisa Zitha.

“We are excited to be partnering with Encounters once again to present the 4th Ster-Kinekor EYE Award. We are constantly amazed at the incredible young talent in this country [and] are looking forward to welcoming new and younger audiences into our cinemas to view, and vote on, the Best South African Short Film at Encounters this year,” says Lynne Wylie, Head of Marketing at Ster-Kinekor Theatres.

Encounters will select three jurors from leading South African film schools to spend three days reviewing cinema screenings of a shortlist of selected films in collaboration with Ster-Kinekor.

Submissions can be made through the Festival’s website using the link below:

Entries from South Africa and Africa can be found at https://www.encounters.co.za/submit-african-documentary/.

South African film submissions are not required to pay a submission fee.

The application deadline is March 10, 2023. Documentaries under 20 minutes in length are eligible for the Ster-Kinekor EYE Award.

In 2017, the Ster-Kinekor Encounters Youth Experience (EYE) Award was established. Previous year’s winners include:

EYE Awards 2017 Winners: 1st prize ‘Nanlaban’ by Shaun Swingler, 2nd prize ‘Can I Please Go to the Bathroom’ by Jessie Zinn

EYE Awards 2018 Winners: 1st prize ‘The Art of Healing’ by Rui Assubuji, 2nd prize ‘Masquerading: To Hell and Back’ by Sofia de Fay

EYE Awards 2019 Winners: 1st prize ‘Waves’ by Jessie Ayles, 2nd prize ‘Gereza’ (Hustler) by Shaun Nelson