This musical documentary captures the whimsical journey of two musicians!

A still from the film Armaan

There is a calming silence in the background as Ali Armaan Zainvi strums his guitar. Smoke is seen emanating from a cigarette stub, which Zainvi has ingeniously placed in between the string of his fret board. He plays on, while the cigarette continues to burn. A few seconds later, the camera fades out and the strumming stops. This is one of the first scenes of 19-year-old Yashasvi Juyal's recently-released music documentary Armaan, and it tellingly sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

A still from the film Armaan

The documentary that has emerged out of Juyal's home turf Dehradun captures the stories of two talented musicians in search of a guru. Zainvi is one of them, while Gaurav Dhiman, who participated in music reality show The X Factor, is another. The man behind the camera is Juyal, who willfully pursued and followed the duo for 11 months, till they managed to convince National Award winning-visually impaired musician Pundit Suchit Narang to train them. "It's the journey of two ambitious small-town boys, who want to follow their passion," says Juyal in a telephonic interview.

In a way, the stories of Juyal's protagonists are no different from that of the young filmmaker. The budding teenager, who has made two documentaries in the span of a year, and received a special jury mention for his first film The Wise Crab at the film festival, Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) last year, is equally passionate about filmmaking. "After I completed Class 12 in Dehradun, I remember being confused about my future. All my classmates were either giving their entrance exams or applying for courses abroad, and I hadn't still figured out what to do," says Juyal. At the time, Juyal's choreographer brother Raghav, who has performed at several dance reality shows, suggested that he come and spend some time in Mumbai. "My brother created that bridge for me," the young filmmaker says.

Yashasvi Juyal's first documentary A Wise Crab received a special Jury mention at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) film festival last year

Here, Juyal found his raison d'être. He recalls attending the MAMI in 2014 just like any other film enthusiast. "I started with one film, and then saw a lot of documentaries. For the first time, I was exposed to world cinema. By the end, I knew this is what I wanted to do," he says. An accidental encounter with Kekada, a popular spot boy at Goregaon Film City, landed him the subject of his first story. A year later, he screened his four-minute short at MAMI, and since then, there's been no looking back.

His second documentary, however, has been in the making for over a year. Juyal chanced upon the idea when he happened to run into his former schoolmate Zainvi, who had just returned from Los Angeles. "Zainvi had gone there to pursue music, but the pressure was so high that he got involved in drugs," says Juyal. "He escaped the mess and returned home determined to look for a teacher, who would help give him direction. I found his story very fascinating and decided to tell it," adds Juyal, who is a self-taught filmmaker.
Somewhere around the same time, he ran into Dhiman, who was still coming to terms with the rejection he had faced at The X Factor show.

"I thought that the contrast in their life stories made for interesting material," the teenager says. However, despite following the boys as they travelled between Dehradun and Rishikesh, Juyal did not know where the plot of his documentary was heading, until the duo decided to study under Pandit Narang.

"Panditji wasn't easy to convince, but he soon warmed to the idea of being filmed," he says. Juyal recorded the film on his Canon EOS 600D DSLR, and edited the 4TB-worth footage himself. But, what sets his 40-minute documentary apart is that he shot the whole movie in black and white. "The reason I prefer B/W is because it doesn't distract you from your subject," he says. Next on the cards are film festivals, where he intends to showcase Armaan. Meanwhile, he is looking for new inspiration that he can capture on
his lens.