Redefining Storytelling: A Conversation With Kaun

Redefining Storytelling: A Conversation With Kaun

Redefining Storytelling: A Conversation With Kaun

From watching Bollywood classics as a child to directing feature films and shaping award-winning campaigns, Kaun has built a career driven by creativity and authenticity. His journey has taken him from working behind the scenes on film sets to becoming a filmmaker, creative director, and storyteller with a distinct voice. In this exclusive conversation with Urban Asian, he reflects on the lessons learned across every stage of his career, the stories that inspire him, and why honesty remains at the heart of everything he creates.

1. How would you describe yourself beyond the titles of writer, creative director, and visual storyteller?
I’ve been around filmmaking since I was 14. I started as an animator, worked almost every job I could find on sets, from spot and catering to editing and assisting, and eventually started directing in 2018. After directing a feature film and several commercials, I moved into advertising in 2022 as a creative director. It has been a strange but incredibly rewarding journey, and now I’m excited to find my way back into films with everything I’ve learned along the way.

2. What inspired you to pursue storytelling as a career?
I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever known anything as well as I’ve known Bollywood.
My parents practically raised me on Zee Cinema, Star Gold, Star Plus and SAB TV. My dad is a walking Bollywood encyclopedia. Whenever a song came on the radio, he’d ask me to guess the film, the actor and the singer. I was doing that when I was three or four.
If you walked into my house on any given morning, my dad would be listening to R.D. Burman, my mom would be humming a song in the kitchen, and my dad would probably be doing impressions of Bollywood actors just to make us laugh. It wasn’t just entertainment in our house, it was an obsession.
My parents also encouraged every creative interest I had. They put me into singing lessons, dance classes, animation school, you name it. Looking back, filmmaking almost felt inevitable because it was the one place where all those art forms came together.
Even my childhood dream of becoming an aeronautical engineer came from watching Iron Man. I chose Journalism and Mass Communication for my bachelor’s degree simply because Shah Rukh Khan had studied it. That’s how deeply films influenced the way I looked at the world. In hindsight, choosing filmmaking as a career wasn’t really a decision, it was just a continuation of the life I’d already been living.

3. When did you realize filmmaking was your true calling?
I honestly don’t think there was one defining moment.
It wasn’t love at first sight, it was consistency. Every time I drifted towards something else, films kept pulling me back. Every role I took, every job I did, somehow revolved around storytelling. Looking back, I don’t think I chose films as much as films chose
me.

4. How do you decide which stories are worth telling?
It’s like falling in love for me, A story has to hit me immediately. It has to excite me from the very first narration or the very first thought. If I’m trying too hard to convince myself that it’s a good idea, it probably isn’t for me. It can’t be ‘go on umpteen amount of dates’ and decide if it’s practical to fall in love with the person/script.

5. Which of your projects has challenged you the most, and why?
Napaak, my first feature, was and still is one of the most challenging pieces of work. One evening me and my cowriter Dev were going through old pieces of poetry we’d written and came across something that we felt could be made into a film. Three months later we had over 100 people believing in the script. People left their jobs to work on the film for 5 months, My 2bhk in Kolkata housed all my friends that had come from different cities only to work on the film, some had left their jobs, some had handed their business to other people and came off to a different city just because they had fallen in love with a few pages filled with words. Even the crew had National Award winning people who just didn’t charge a penny to work on the film. Handling expectations and a vision as a 21 year old then was exciting, tiring but oh so thrilling man! And we shot a feature film in 6 days, which is unheard of but could only happen because every single person gave it their all. And it was only easy even in the most challenging moments because people got together to make art that they believed in.

6. How do you overcome creative blocks?
I don’t like believing in creative blocks.
I tell myself it’s just my brain asking for more input. So I consume, I watch films, I read, I listen to music, I sketch, and then I sit down and write anyway.
Not everything has to be brilliant. Sometimes it’s a scene, sometimes it’s a sher, sometimes it’s just a bad page. But I think the act of creating is what eventually gets you out of the slump.

7. How do you balance artistic vision with audience expectations? I actually don’t think artists should begin with audience expectations.
If you’re constantly trying to predict what people want, you’ll end up chasing trends instead of telling honest stories. My responsibility is to make something truthful. If it connects with people, that’s wonderful. But honesty has to come before approval.

8. Which filmmakers, writers, or artists have inspired you the most? Saadat Hassan Manto for his honesty and realism.
Yash Chopra for emotions and romance. Ishq dikhaao toh aisa dikhaao warna na dikhaao.
Satyajit Ray for observation, the beautification of mundane moments and approach.

9. How has social media changed the way you create and share your work?
I had always been uploading on Instagram, but very passively. Earlier this year, when I left my corporate job as a Creative Director, I decided I wanted to start posting things that genuinely mattered to me—things that reflected who I was instead of what I thought people wanted to see.
Funny enough, I probably still wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for a friend. While out for a drive, I was doing impressions of Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar and Abhay Deol, just a silly party trick I’d been doing for years. She recorded it, practically forced me to upload it, and it went viral almost overnight.
More than the numbers, it gave me the confidence I didn’t know I needed. After spending years creating work for brands and clients, it was reassuring to know people connected with something that was just… me. That encouraged me to start posting poetry, storytelling, singing, and everything else I genuinely enjoy. Thankfully, people have continued to connect with it, and that’s made the journey incredibly fulfilling.

10. What’s one lesson every aspiring filmmaker should learn early?
Learn how to sell. Not just sell your film, but sell your ideas, your vision and yourself.
Filmmaking is collaborative. If you can’t convince people to believe in your story, it’s very difficult to build a team that will help you tell it. And, be honest.

11. How do you define success as an artist?
Success to me is contentment. If I am happy with the product and the money that has come with it, I believe I’m successful. Art is subjective and people might not like what you’ve made which is fair. You can’t build your definition of success on opinions that are constantly changing.

12. What advice would you give to young creators trying to find their unique voice?
Make everything.
Don’t wait for the perfect script or the perfect opportunity. Shoot, write, edit, fail, repeat.
Your voice isn’t something you discover while thinking about it. It’s something that emerges after making a lot of work. Quantity doesn’t guarantee quality, but quality almost always comes after quantity.

13. You’ve worked in independent films, advertising, and now social media. Which version of yourself has been the happiest?
I think it’s made me a far more empathetic filmmaker.
When you’ve been the person carrying equipment, serving food, staying up all night to edit, or waiting for someone else’s approval, you understand that every person on a set is contributing to the same story. No job feels small anymore because I’ve done many of them.
As a director, that perspective changes the way you lead. You stop thinking of people as departments and start thinking of them as collaborators. I also think it has made me a better problem solver. Having worked across different roles, I usually understand where a problem is coming from and how we can solve it together.
At the end of the day, films aren’t made by directors. They’re made by teams. The director just gets blamed or praised the most.
The happiest version of me is always the one that’s closest to storytelling. The job title has changed over the years, but whenever I’m writing, directing or performing, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

14. You started in the industry at 14 and have worked everything from spot to directing. How has that shaped your leadership on set?
I don’t think I’ve ever been happiest because of a designation. I’ve been happiest whenever I’ve been closest to storytelling.
Animation taught me patience. Editing taught me rhythm. Advertising taught me clarity. Social media taught me honesty. Filmmaking somehow combines all of those.
So if I had to pick one, I’d say the happiest version of me is the one that’s writing, directing and performing. Not because it’s glamorous—it really isn’t—but because it’s the version that feels most authentic.
I think every version of my career has simply been preparing me for the next one. So instead of asking which version was happiest, I hope the happiest version is still ahead of me.