Few words can trigger such immediate anxiety in South Africa, especially when they are shouted from behind a Home Affairs desk.
You have already been sitting for what feels like half your natural life. You have completed forms, written your name and surname roughly 150 times. You copied your postal address so often that you are beginning to wonder whether the building might collapse if you stop.
Then, finally, you hear it.
“Next!”
For many South Africans, Home Affairs is the ultimate test of patience. For Lionel (Danny Ross), our central figure in short film "Wag ’n bietjie", it is a job.
The film's Home Affairs setting feels familiar too: long lines of people spilling through an often tired-looking government building, fluorescent lights and the unmistakable sense that your patience is being tested before you have even reached the desk.
Christian Grobbelaar’s short film follows Lionel, a professional queue-sitter who earns money by standing in lines for other people.
It is a strange occupation, but one that feels entirely plausible in a country where people would rather pay someone else to endure hours of administrative misery.
But the queue is only the beginning. A stranger then approaches Lionel with a much more difficult request; he wants him to sit beside his dying mother until she dies.
Suddenly, Lionel’s ability to wait is being tested in a way that has nothing to do with paperwork.
Grobbelaar could have made this a relentlessly sombre film, but instead, he allows humour and awkwardness to sit alongside grief.
The director originally conceived the story as a thriller, but while grieving his own mother, he rewrote it into a more personal exploration of death, regret and the need to start living.
Lionel’s fear of caring for someone who is dying is one of the film’s most effective elements. Ross does not turn him into an instant expert on grief. Lionel remains curious, awkward and almost childlike in his questioning.
He asks things because he genuinely wants to understand, even when there may be no satisfying answer. It is the innocence that Ross injects into Lionel which gives the short film its warmth.
And is it not strange that we fear the one thing that will eventually happen to all of us?
That is where the title becomes more meaningful. "Wag ’n bietjie" means “wait a little”, but waiting becomes much more than a phrase in the film.
Lionel waits at Home Affairs. He waits beside a dying woman. He waits for her final breath.
And somewhere between those two forms of waiting, he begins to realise that he may have been waiting through his own life too.
Lionel’s second waiting carries a different kind of weight. There is no form to complete and no number to call. There is simply another person’s final moments and the uncomfortable knowledge that time is running out.
Ross also brings a warmth to Lionel without making him perfect. He has a heart of gold and the instincts of a people-pleaser; the kind of person who struggles to say no when somebody needs help.
That generosity makes his situation more affecting because he is not simply doing a job. He becomes emotionally invested, even when the situation becomes uncomfortable and frightening.
The film's humour keeps its message from becoming too heavy. We have all been told that life is short, but "Wag ’n bietjie" places that familiar sentiment somewhere we understand: a queue, where time passes whether we are ready for it or not.
The contrast between the Home Affairs setting and the intimate bedroom is important. Jason Haji-Joannou’s cinematography, which won Best Cinematography in a Short Film at the Silwerskerm Awards, gives the film a restrained visual language that suits its subject.
The film was also awarded Best Short Film by an Established Filmmaker, while Ross won Best Actor in a Short Film. Those accolades make sense, particularly because the film manages to take a distinctly ordinary South African frustration and turn it into a meditation on time.
There is a risk with a story like this. Its message can easily become too obvious. We have all been told to stop waiting for life to begin.
But "Wag ’n bietjie" gives that familiar sentiment a more uncomfortable question. How much of our lives are spent waiting for the next thing?
Waiting for the right job. Waiting for money. Waiting for a relationship. Waiting for the weekend. Waiting for the paperwork. Waiting for things to get easier.
And while we wait, life is still happening.
That is what makes this short film linger. It begins with a queue we know all too well and ends by asking whether we have become too comfortable standing in one.
Eventually, someone will call “Next!”, the question is what we have been doing while we waited.
culture_thenational@nationalmg.co.za