Sheetal Menon; a still from ‘Duet’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
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 Jubileefame and backed by Bejoy, it is the first short film ever to be released on Spotify and will also be available to stream on Getaway Pictures’ YouTube channel.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.
