I Have No Space but Guitars Need to Be Repaired is the Winner of the Do It Ourselves Docufilm Competition 2026 (Open Category), an Esplanade Offstage initiative inviting emerging filmmakers to tell stories from Singapore's independent music community.

Directed and produced by Nur Raudah Ruzli and Syafiqah Muhammad Noh under Capunklang. Featuring Wax (Wax Guitar Services). Shot and edited by Nur Raudah Ruzli. Animated by Syafiqah Muhammad Noh.

At Wax's place, the guitars queue from the toilet door to the kitchen, and have done so for five years straight. His mum says she wakes up stressed just knowing they are there. Wax just shrugs it off. It's part of the job now.

He didn't plan on becoming one of Singapore's most trusted guitar repair guys. It started with his own guitar, broken after one too many house moves following his parents' divorce. Sixteen years old and broke, he picked up a four-dollar soldering pen and figured it out himself. That fix turned into an actual trade once his first paying client, a schoolmate who'd normally send her guitars elsewhere, handed him thirty-five dollars on the third repair and told him to just take it.

Word got around fast after that. At a free pop-up he ran at LASALLE, a guitarist from the Austrian band six-score showed up out of nowhere, tipped off by mutual friends who had told him, "our friend Wax is giving free guitar repairs, go get your guitars done up." That kind of trust followed him on tour with local grindcore legends Wormrot too, all the way to a handshake from Megadeth's own drummer backstage in France, who apparently already knew him as "the Wax man."

People expect a guitar repair guy to be some grizzled veteran, decades into the craft. What they get instead is Wax at twenty-five, and he knows it throws some clients off. Doesn't stop him from keeping the shop open late and letting people pay him back slowly without charging interest. No scene is off limits for this guy—he works with everyone from underground hardcore kids to mainstream names.

Friends since film school, aspiring filmmakers Syafiqah and Raudah found themselves longing to make films again. Embracing the DIO spirit, they bring together Syafiqah’s animation expertise with Raudah’s filmmaking practice, merging their creative languages to tell stories through a shared visual art form.

Instagram Handles:

@femalespiderman – Nur Raudah Ruzli
@kopisyafuncle – Syafiqah Muhammad Noh
@Capunklang - Production Profile
@waxguitarservices – Wax

Music credit:

Enjoy Your Life
Written and produced by: Intermission Party Programme and Kribo Records.
Performed by: Intermission Party Programme 

makeout
Written by: Qays Martin Johari and slump
Performed by: slump
Mixing engineer: Shah Nizam
Mastering engineer: 'onlycanadianonwednesdays'

in transit - Demo
Written and performed by: Trevor Wee Courtesy of Trevor Wee

Watch other videos in Esplanade Offstage's Do It Ourselves series on people who keep the indie scene going from behind the scenes!