ENCOUNTERS 2026: My Father's Son

Every year since our founding in 2010, The Bioscope has proudly hosted screenings of The Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. Now celebrating its 28th year as a festival, Encounters returns to The Bioscope once again with screenings at The Bioscope from 5 - 14 June. Tickets are R90. 

SEE THE FULL BIOSCOPE ENCOUNTERS PROGRAM HERE.

My Father’s Son (10PG)

Dir. Elan Gamaker | South Africa | 2026 | 56 min.

In 2020, two estranged South African brothers—one Jewish, one Black—meet online for the first time and, through a series of Zoom calls, begin uncovering a shared past shaped by separation, silence, and unexpected brotherhood. My Father’s Son moves between present-day video calls and fragments of memory as the brothers piece together a history held in archive photographs, home videos, cassettes, and family stories. What emerges is a fractured portrait of a father whose absence defined two parallel lives, shaped by apartheid’s racial divides, secrecy, and the complex realities of raising children across boundaries of race, class, and belonging. As they confront inherited narratives, gossip, and half-truths, their search for understanding becomes a reckoning with loss, identity, and the meaning of fatherhood. Across continents and screens, the brothers’ lost years reveal the complexities of connection as they heal from the legacy of a segregated country and a wounded family.