A few years ago, Sheetal Menon was on the verge of walking away from the entertainment industry. After years as a successful model and later as an actor, the agonising wait for good work had left her questioning if there was anything left for her in cinema. She didn’t expect that stepping into an acting and creative workshop to figure out her next step would lead her behind the camera instead.

A story handed to her by her filmmaker husband Bejoy Nambiar for an improvisation session prompted her to develop it into a screenplay. “I didn’t even know how to write one!” she recalls. “I would sit in a coffee shop every day and just will myself to do it. I also met my co-writer Arpita Chatterjee in this journey, and the two of us just clicked,” she says.

A year later, that quiet persistence gave birth to her 2019 directorial debut, Sibling, and now, her sophomore short film, Duet. A poignant meditation on grief, music, and the unspoken connections that pull us out of despair, Duet marks a major industry shift. Starring Sidhant Gupta of Jubilee

The short film follows a grieving pianist grappling with the sudden loss of his estranged brother amid the isolation of the pandemic. As he plays through his grief, an inexplicable, distant violin responds to his tune, creating a haunting, unspoken musical dialogue that pulls him back toward hope.

Although the plot isn’t autobiographical, its emotional centre is formed by a deeply shared collective reality. “During the pandemic, some of us were asking ourselves what was happening to people suffering alone in their homes,” Sheetal explains. When she shared a draft of her story with a renowned musician down South, he broke down on the phone, telling her he had gone through similar moments of despair. “That was my moment of reassurance that the story was touching something real,” she says.

The pre-production took a major chunk of time. Sidhant had never played a musical instrument in his life, and it took a few sessions of coaching and practising on his rental piano for him to feel ready to take on this role. The film’s evocative music is at the heart of the narrative, and it took Sheetal almost a year to find her music collaborators. She had a reference playlist on Spotify featuring global pianist composers such as Eric Christian from New York, Ben Crosland from London, and Sydney-based Sid Acharya. Taking a long shot, she messaged them on Instagram. To her astonishment, all three replied, stating they resonated with the pandemic-centric narrative. While Ben and Eric gave her permission to use their existing original works, Sid composed the background score. “Finding the music, for me, was the most beautiful part of making this film,” she smiles.

But the struggle wasn’t over. The completed film sat in Sheetal’s hard drive for almost three years, without finding a distribution outlet. “I had completely given up at one point,” she candidly admits, adding that although short films take the same effort and money as larger formats, there is no proper ecosystem to release them. The turning point came when Bejoy and their mutual friend and producer Harini Lakshminarayan suggested pitching the music-heavy film to Spotify, and the platform responded immediately, scheduling the film to release on July 30.

With Duet now finding its audience, Sheetal is ready to take on a full-length feature and has a story ready, too. For a filmmaker who questioned if there was anything left for her in cinema, it looks like Sheetal has just started her journey.

Published - July 28, 2026 04:00 pm IST