Exclusive: Shefali Shah reveals she always wanted to direct; wasn’t sure if she could take up the responsibility

After winning the country over with her acting chops, the exceptionally talented and versatile Shefali Shah decided to make her directorial debut with a short film she wrote, directed and acted in-- Happy Birthday Mummy Ji. As we all know, she is an actor who never disappoints. Well, the same can be said about her as a director. The short film followed the story of a woman who planned a birthday party for her mother-in-law at a farmhouse. However, she got stuck their due to the pandemic while her family celebrated the occasion back at home, taking everything she did for granted. From the simple yet hard-hitting story line to the well thought of color sequence and outfits, everything was top notch.

In an exclusive interview with Desimartini, we asked the actress when she knew she wanted to be a director. To this, Shah replied, “You know I’ve always wanted to direct. I’ve always wanted to direct, I just wasn’t sure if I could take up the responsibility of a full-fledged feature. And then I kept thinking you know one day I’ll direct. During the pandemic what happened is we also realized somewhere that life is very unpredictable and we had to make the most of today. So it’s like a switch that went on in my head. These are the two stories that came to me-- ‘Someday’ being my first film as a director, which is doing the festival circuit, it’s showcasing at the Stuttgart Film Festival right now in a couple of days, and then this (Happy Birthday Mummy Ji). I just realized that you know what, I can’t keep waiting for that one day to happen. I want to do this and I am going to do it now. And that’s exactly how it happened.”

She went on to share, “I have written scripts, I want to direct full-fledged films, I keep writing. But with these two I said it’s so close to heart, also it’s based in the pandemic. It talks about a very prevalent situation, not just because of the pandemic but because there are a lot of times even if you’re in a crowd you could feel extremely isolated. So it was just all together and like a switch went on and I said okay fine, I want to direct and I want to do it now.”

“Until you don’t dive into the deep sea you’re not going to learn how to swim,” concluded Shefali. Now that is something we can all learn from her, don’t you think?