The 13th European Film Festival in South Africa is a cinematic journey unfolding at select cinemas in Joburg and Pretoria. Running from 17 to 27 September 2026, contemporary films from across the continent paint intimate, human portraits of family in all its different forms as vital to personal, psychological and social survival.
What’s in store for the 13th European Film Festival in 2026?
This year’s programme boasts 12 films from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
The schedule includes new work from Oscar-winning directors Pawel Pawlikowski and Paolo Sorrentino; social realist legends, the Dardenne Brothers; BAFTA-winning feature debutant Akinola Davies Jr.; and intriguing, entertaining, always engaging work from both veteran and emerging European cinematic storytellers.
Featuring impressive performances from the cream of European talent including Mads Mikkelsen, Javier Bardem, Sandra Hüller and Carice van Houten as well as a host of newcomers ably meeting the challenges of demanding, emotional roles – the 13th edition of South Africa’s premier festival for cinema-lovers explores family and its realities and challenges across time, place and genre.
This year’s European Film Festival is extra special, as it pays tribute to the tireless dedication and vision of former co-director of the festival Peter Rorvik, who sadly passed away earlier in 2026.
Keep an eye on the European Film Festival’s official website for this year’s screening programme, coming soon. Expecting screenings in both Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The European Film Festival 2026 programme:
The Last Viking
Opening the European Film Festival 2026 is The Last Viking, a madcap, blackly comic Danish family-drama/crime-caper-noir about brothers, mental health, past secrets, the Beatles and getting by with more than a little bit of help from your friends. The film features Denmark’s biggest star Mads Mikkelsen leading a star-studded cast.
My Father’s Shadow
Winner of the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut, British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr’s first feature, My Father’s Shadow (UK), marks the arrival of a vital, bold new voice in world cinema.
Poetically realised with haunting imagery and bustling, vivid, angry life, it’s a deeply personal film in tribute not only to its creators’ own father but to all parents who face the daily struggle to keep their families alive and together at all costs.
Fatherland
Fatherland is Germany’s offering to the 13th European Film Festival. Directed by Oscar-winning director Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida and Cold War), European cinema’s master of visual and narrative precision delivers a tightly controlled, intimate and heart-breaking portrait of German literary legend Thomas Mann as he and his daughter make a journey across a nation trying to grapple with grief and the horrors of the past as the Cold War rages.
Winner of the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Festival, the film stars Oscar-nominated Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, Project Hail Mary).
Young Mothers
In Young Mothers (Belgium), the multiple award-winning Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne paint a small, gritty and empathetic portrait of the struggles of young mothers.
Abandoned by their families and society, these courageous and anxious young women support each other as they make the first of many tough adult decisions of their lives. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at Cannes 2026.
La Grazia
Oscar- and BAFTA-winning Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) reteams with collaborator Toni Servillo in La Grazia (Italy).
Servillo won a Best Actor statue at the Venice Film Festival for his performance in this elegantly styled, intimate drama about fathers, daughters, love, duty and the eternal question of “who owns our days?”- set against the grubby backdrop of Italian politics.
Colours of Time
Colours of Time (France) directed by Cédric Klapisch is a family drama that weaves together stories from one family’s 19th century past and their 21st-century present. A memorably delightful and touching exploration of art, family and history.
Porcelain War
Porcelain War (Ukraine) co-directed by Brendan Bellomo and the documentary’s key protagonist, Slava Leontyev, is an inspirational Oscar-nominated film in which Leontyev, his wife, and their friend tell – at great personal risk and with footage they shot – the story of how their lives as artists were brutally upended by the war in Ukraine.
Now, with roles as Ukrainian soldiers, they reveal their undying passion for art and nature as they risk everything for family, nation and freedom.
The Beloved
Oscar winner Javier Bardem gives a brooding performance as the fictional, acclaimed, mercurial Spanish film director Esteban Martínez in The Beloved (Spain).
Directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, The Beloved follows as Martínez returns to his homeland to film a colonial-era period drama set in the Western Sahara. The film unravels the fragile relationship between fathers and daughters and asks difficult questions about personal sacrifices made in service of art.
A Family
In A Family (Netherlands) Dutch director Mees Peijnenburg offers a powerful window into divorce in modern Europe, told empathetically through the eyes of a brother and sister each trying to find their own ways and hopefully a path together through the aftermath of the bitter war between their parents.
The film stars Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones) and Pieter Embrechts.
Franz
Veteran award-winning Polish director Agnieszka Holland offers an energetic, bright biopic about the enigmatic literary genius Franz Kafka in Franz. The film contemplates its protagonist, his difficult relationship with his father, and imagines how his legacy might be celebrated in the future.
Christy
Ireland’s Christy is a debut feature from Brendan Canty which has picked up multiple nominations and awards at this year’s Irish Film and TV Awards for its tender direction and impressive lead performance from Danny Power as the title character.
In the film, a teenager with a murkily remembered tragic past returns to Cork to stay with his estranged brother after he’s kicked out of his latest foster home.
As he tries to figure out his future, he rediscovers a relationship with his brother and begins to imagine a home among people in a place he might yet grow to know and love.
Aquí
The extraordinary and original Aquí (Portugal) is director Tiago Guedes’ ambitious, epic and suitably enigmatic adaptation of the Jesus trilogy of novels by South African Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee.
It stays true to its source material’s humanist hopes, despairs and probing of the eternal philosophical questions that keep families and societies eternally (and anxiously) moving onward.
Get in touch
Website: eurofilmfest.co.za
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