A new movie release, ‘SABBATICAL’, looks at the unannounced return of a banker, Lesego, to her childhood home.

Lesego is the face of many young Black professionals — groomed to succeed, taught to never look back, told that failure isn’t just personal but collective. When she’s implicated in a financial scandal and her corporate dream crumbles, she is forced to return to the one place she never imagined she’d end up again: her mother’s home in Pretoria.

It’s a homecoming, yes — but not the sweet, cinematic kind. SABBATICAL isn’t interested in nostalgia. It’s more honest than that.

There’s a moment in SABBATICAL — quiet, unassuming — when Lesego, played with heartbreaking restraint by Mona Monyane, wakes up to hammering and realising that she is in her childhood bedroom, there is panic, amnesia and a hint of regret. That scene is palpable and draws up dreaded feelings of the return home.

Speaking to director Karabo Lediga a day or two after the screening of the film, I found myself not asking about plot twists or camera tricks, but about that scene, the realisation, the familiarity and whether it is conjured from some memory tucked away in her past.

Lediga’s SABBATICAL is the kind of film that sneaks up on you. It doesn’t dazzle with stunts or drown in satire or tragedy. It observes and in that observation lies its power — uncomfortable, tender, and deeply familiar. It’s a film that sees us. Especially those of us who’ve spent years performing strength in Johannesburg, slowly forgetting home.

The genius of Lediga’s direction is that she lets the story breathe. You feel the silences between mother and daughter. You feel the unspoken blame, the quiet shame, the years of unsaid things pressing in on conversations that try, and fail, to remain polite.

Clementine Mosimane delivers a towering performance as Doris — a woman who raised a daughter to escape poverty, only to watch her fall and struggle to be still.

What makes SABBATICAL extraordinary is how ordinary it dares to be. The film resists spectacle. There’s no villain, no saviour. Just people — broken, proud, surviving. It reminds us that sometimes the real drama is not in scandal, but in the small, daily unravelings: a missed call, a closed door, a lukewarm cup of tea that speaks volumes.

And yet, despite the emotional heaviness, the film is not without humour. The Stokvel aunties, the nosy neighbours, the flirty ex-boyfriend — they all add texture and life. They speak in Spitori and sass, and remind us that even in pain, we laugh. That’s the South African way, isn’t it?

Movie | ‘Sabbatical’ explores the delicate ties of a family

But don’t mistake SABBATICAL for comfort viewing. It demands something of you — patience, presence, and reflection. It will annoy those looking for fast fixes. It might even bore viewers accustomed to melodrama and over-sensationalised trauma.

As Lediga put it, “I kinda obsess in the nature of humanness of the character, and how to portray these larger than life characters in the most normal yet compelling way without much poetics…”

The cinematography by Motheo Moeng is intimate, warm, and unflinching. Every shot feels lived in. And Bokani Dyer’s jazz-infused score drapes over the scenes like memory, sometimes soothing, sometimes aching. It’s music that lingers long after the credits roll, but misses a thematic thread, a sound or note that is ambient throughout the film.

There’s something poignant about the fact that SABBATICAL opens on Mother’s Day weekend. This is a film for anyone who has had to return to the person who raised them — not just physically, but emotionally. For anyone who has sat across the table from a parent and realised just how much they never said.

Lediga told me, “We spend our twenties trying to prove we’re different from our mothers. Then something breaks, and we realise we’re more like them than we thought. That’s what SABBATICAL is — the moment that realisation sinks in.”

I left the cinema carrying that thought. In a world that celebrates the rise, SABBATICAL sits in the fall. And not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind where you look around and think — maybe going home isn’t failure. Maybe it’s the start of something more honest.

SABBATICAL opens nationwide on May 9. Don’t watch it for the twist,  watch it for the truth. Because sometimes, survival isn’t about the hustle, it’s about the sabbatical. And the courage it takes to stay still long enough to feel what you’ve been running from.

SABBATICAL: Behind the scenes Images: