There are some films you make to say something clearly.

And some you make to discover whether something can be said at all.

SMS belonged to the second kind for me.

It was an experiment. A small attempt to explore whether intimacy, longing and emotional uncertainty could be expressed through the space between sound and image. Through pauses. Through messages. Through what is suggested more than shown.

At the time, the idea of relationships shaped through phones and text messages felt intriguing, even slightly unreal. Today it feels ordinary. But I was interested in that blurred territory early on.

What happens when affection grows through screens?

When typed words begin to feel more immediate than spoken ones?

When the virtual starts carrying the emotional weight of the real?

That curiosity became SMS.

The film follows Rishabh, a young man drifting between reality and virtuality, until a thread of messages begins altering the course of his life. On the surface it is a love story. But for me it was also about perception, projection and the fragile ways we construct emotional worlds.

Could a relationship built through fragments feel real?

Could absence itself become presence?

Could technology mediate tenderness without diminishing it?

Those were some of the questions I was trying to work through.

As a storyteller, you often fall in love with your own story first. That is both strength and trap.

Then the work goes out into the world and you discover whether it resonates beyond you.

Views, reactions, silence — they all tell you something.

SMS may not have reached many people, or touched many hearts. That is possible.

But I still look back at it with affection.

Because it was an honest attempt.

And sometimes experimentation matters even when outcomes are uncertain.

Especially then.

I think every filmmaker has works that are stepping stones. Projects where one is learning language, rhythm, risk. This was one of those for me.

A small film, but an important exercise in trying to understand how emotion can travel through minimal means.

If you watch it now, it may feel like a quiet early meditation on relationships in a mediated world.

Or simply a virtual love story.

Either way, I hope something in it lingers.

Do watch it, and do share your feedback. I’d genuinely like to know how it feels to you now.