EXCL! Kushaal Chawla On Dream Slate Pictures' Cannes Lions 2026 Entry, Why Indian Talent Is Ready For World

Dream Slate Pictures, the independent production house and creative studio founded by filmmaker Kushaal Chawla, has achieved a significant milestone on the global creative stage. The company's Kellogg's Nouilles Ivory Coast campaign has been entered into the Creative Commerce category at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026, placing the Indian studio alongside some of the world's biggest creative players.

In an exclusive conversation with Filmibeat Assistant Editor Abhishek Ranjit, Kushaal Chawla opens up about what the Cannes Lions recognition means, the growing global influence of Indian talent, the role of AI in modern storytelling, and his upcoming projects ranging from African television to a biopic on Kiran Bedi.

Here are excerpts from the interview-

1. Congratulations on Dream Slate Pictures' Cannes Lions 2026 entry. How significant is this milestone for you personally and for the company?

Thank you, it genuinely means a lot. For me personally, it's a moment of real pride, because it represents everything we've been quietly building towards. I've spent years telling stories across films and advertising, in India and around the world, and to have our work standing on a stage like Cannes Lions, the most prestigious creative platform there is, that's special.

But what makes it sweeter is that we did it our way. Dream Slate Pictures, as an independent studio, operating out of India, competing with the biggest names in the world. For the company, it's a signal. It tells us that the path we've chosen, blending serious filmmaking craft with new-age AI technology, is the right one. This isn't a finish line for us. If anything, it feels like the starting gun.

2. What does it mean to have an independently produced Indian campaign recognized at a global platform like the Cannes Lions?

It means the rules are changing, and I love that.

For the longest time, getting to a stage like Cannes felt like it required the machinery of a giant global network behind you. Hundreds of people, massive budgets, offices on every continent. An independent Indian creative & film studio doing this, for a global brand, in a West African market, would have sounded almost impossible a few years ago. So to be here now says something bigger than just one campaign. It says great work can come from anywhere. You don't need to be the biggest. You need the sharpest idea and the courage to back it. And honestly, I hope it gives other independent studios in India the belief that this stage is open to them too.

3. Do you believe this achievement reflects the growing influence of Indian creative talent on the international stage?

Absolutely, and it's long overdue. Indian creative talent has always been world-class. What's changed is access. The world is finally flat enough, and the tools are finally democratic enough, that talent from India can compete head-to-head with anyone, anywhere, without having to leave home to do it.

What I find really exciting is that this wasn't an Indian campaign for India. This was an Indian studio creating work for a brand in West Africa, and the work held its own globally. That's a shift. We're no longer just telling our own stories to our own audiences. We're becoming creative partners to the world. And I think this is just the beginning of India taking up a much bigger seat at the global creative table.

4. What were the biggest challenges and learnings while executing a campaign for the Ivory Coast market from India?

The biggest challenge was also the biggest learning, and it was about humility. We were creating for a culture we hadn't grown up in. You cannot fake that understanding, and you absolutely cannot impose your own assumptions on it.

So we had to listen first. We had to deeply understand how families in Ivory Coast eat, what makes them laugh, who they trust, what their everyday looks like. And interestingly, AI also became a huge help here, letting us research and understand the market with a depth that simply wasn't possible before. But the real lesson was this. The specifics are always local, the humour, the celebrities, the language, but the emotions underneath are universal. The love of feeding your family, the little pride of getting something right. Once we anchored ourselves in those universal emotions and respected the local culture on top, everything worked. That balance, global heart, local detail, is something I'll carry into every project from now on.

5. Dream Slate Pictures has been actively integrating AI into its production workflows. How has AI changed the way you conceptualize and execute advertising campaigns?

It's been transformational, but maybe not in the way people assume. Everyone thinks AI just makes things faster and cheaper. It does, but that's the least interesting part.
For me, the real change is creative freedom. Ideas that would once have been killed by budget or timelines are suddenly possible.

We can produce cinematic, high-quality films at a speed that lets us stay part of the cultural conversation week after week, not just once at launch. It means we can dream bigger and execute faster. As a director, that's liberating. The limits that used to box in your imagination start to fall away. But, and this is important to me, the conceptualisation, the heart of the idea, that's still entirely human. AI hasn't changed why we tell stories. It's just given us a far more powerful way to tell them.

6. There is often concern that AI could replace human creativity. How do you view the relationship between technology and creative storytelling?

I understand the fear, but I see it completely differently. AI is not a replacement for creativity. It's an amplifier of it.

Think about it this way. The digital camera (after the film camera) or computer based editing and sound didn't replace the filmmaker. It gave the filmmaker a new, faster and more accessible way to tell their stories. AI is the same. It's the most powerful creative tool we've ever been handed, but it's still just a tool. It has no taste, no instinct, no lived experience, no understanding of why a particular moment makes you cry or laugh. That all still comes from the human being holding it.

In our work, every emotional beat, every cultural decision, every story choice was made by people. AI helped us execute that vision at a scale we couldn't have reached otherwise. So I don't fear it at all. I think the storytellers who embrace it will leave the ones who resist it far behind. As I always say, it's time to make AI your best friend.

7. Your Hollywood film Another Time received recognition internationally. How did that experience shape your approach to storytelling?

"Another Time" taught me something I've never let go of. That a great story doesn't need a passport. It premiered at Warner Bros, it found audiences across the US, the UK, Germany, on Amazon Prime Video, and what struck me was that people from completely different cultures connected with the same emotional core. That stayed with me.
It taught me to always build from emotion first.

Get the human truth right, and the story will travel anywhere. Everything since, whether it's a Hollywood film, an Indian biopic, or a noodle campaign in West Africa, comes back to that same lesson. Honour the universal emotion, respect the local culture, and audiences anywhere in the world will let you in. That experience gave me the confidence to think globally from day one, and never to underestimate an audience, wherever they are.

8. Your reality show Power Woman is airing in Africa. How important is it for you to create content that resonates across cultures?

It's incredibly important to me, in fact it's becoming the heart of what we do at Dream Slate Pictures. "Power Woman" is a reality TV show on Zee World Africa that celebrates the mental and physical strength of African women as they compete across a series of challenges. Creating it, alongside our brand work across markets, showed me first-hand that the best content simply doesn't stay within borders. The stories that travel are the ones built on genuine human emotion, aspiration, struggle, triumph, the things every culture instantly understands.

What excites me is making work that feels deeply local to whoever is watching, while carrying a universal heart underneath. That's the future I want Dream Slate Pictures to live in, content that an audience in Africa, India or anywhere else can each feel is truly their own. Cultural resonance isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's the whole game.

9. You're also directing a biopic on Kiran Bedi. What drew you to her story, and what can audiences expect from the film?

Dr. Kiran Bedi's story is one of the most extraordinary inspiring life stories I've come across, and yet so much of it remains untold. India's first woman IPS officer, someone who walked into one of the most male-dominated institutions in the country and simply refused to bend. What drew me in was the courage, the sheer will to stand alone and do what's right, again and again, often at great personal cost.

The tagline of our film says it best, "The Name You Know. The Story You Don't." Everyone knows her name. Very few know the real human being behind it. That's the story we're telling, and it's an absolute privilege to tell it.