There is a certain kind of production house that doesn’t announce itself loudly. It just keeps making work that refuses to be ignored. The Unicorn Films is that kind of house.

Founded in late 2024 by producer Avishek Ghosh and partnered by director Prosit Roy, The Unicorn Films was built on a simple but uncompromising belief: that advertising films deserve the same cinematic rigour as any feature. That a 3-minute film for a steel brand can make you stop to think and reflect on matters that are brushed under the carpet – to start a conversation around it. That a 90-second montage of Mumbai strangers can feel like a love letter to an entire city. Their recent haul at the Goafest, Kyoorius and Good Ads Matter Awards 2026 — including the most prestigious honour of the last event, the inaugural Piyush Pandey Polaris Award — is proof that this belief has been right all along.

A Small Team, A Large Ambition

The Unicorn Films runs lean — a core team of six people. But lean, here, is a philosophy as much as a fact. It means every person in the room is essential, every voice is heard, and the gap between a creative idea and its execution is as short as it can possibly be. 

In a world where production houses can become bureaucracies, The Unicorn Films has believed in prioritising people above everything else – from the Spot Dada to the CEO’s of big MNC’s. 

The Culture of Craft

If there is one thing Avishek Ghosh will tell you defines the culture of The Unicorn Films, it is an obsessive commitment to craft. Not just in the broad sense of good filmmaking, but in the granular: the quality of light in a frame, the casting of a face that doesn’t need dialogue to communicate, the sound design that makes silence feel heavy.

This sensibility has a specific origin. Avishek is a trained editor. An alumnus of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata and a Gold Medalist from Calcutta University in Mass Communication – his education shapes the way they approach every project. 

Prosit Roy brings a complementary instinct — that of a director who trusts character over plot, silence over exposition. Together, they make a house where craft is not a department. It is the entire culture.

The Most Indian Thing About Us

Both Avishek and Prosit are sons of Kolkata — the city that gave Indian cinema Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen. To grow up there, to be shaped by its adda culture and its fierce aesthetic arguments, is to carry a particular inheritance: a belief that stories must be truthful before they are beautiful, and beautiful before they are loud. 

That Bengali sensibility, true to their core strengths and showcasing who they really are, is perhaps the most distinctly Indian thing about The Unicorn Films. India doesn’t tell one kind of story. It tells a thousand kinds, in a thousand dialects of feeling. The Unicorn Films tries to honour that multiplicity — whether it is a Durga Puja saree that weaves together two red-and-white icons, or a father who hires a wedding band to bring his daughter home from an abusive marriage. The films always begin with the human truth, not the brand brief.

And now, that sensibility is travelling. Prosit Roy’s film Band Baaja Bitiya is in competition at Cannes Lions 2026 in the Film Craft category — the first time The Unicorn Films carries the Indian advertising flag to the Croisette. 

Five Films That Tell the Story

Goel TMT — Band Baaja Bitiya  (Produced by The Unicorn Films | Directed by Prosit Roy)

The Piyush Pandey Polaris Award winner at Good Ads Matter 2026 — and the only film in this list that brings together Prosit Roy, Avishek Ghosh, and The Unicorn Films as a complete creative unit. A father hires a wedding band not to send his daughter away, but to bring her home from an abusive marriage. Featuring Gajraj Rao in a performance of devastating quietness, it is a landmark in Indian purpose advertising.

Mother Dairy — Aai Jaisi Mumbai  (Produced by The Unicorn Films | Avishek Ghosh)

A black-and-white love letter to the city, told through the small, unremarkable acts of strangers caring for each other — a film that won multiple metals at Good Ads Matter 2026, entered the IMPACT Hall of Fame 2025, and proved that the best brand films don’t sell a product, they sell a feeling.

Coca-Cola — Laal Paar (Produced by The Unicorn Films | Avishek Ghosh)

An icon meets an icon — Bengal’s red-and-white laal paar saree woven together with Coca-Cola’s red-and-white identity, honouring Phulia’s artisans during Durga Puja in a film that felt less like advertising and more like cultural documentation.

Paatal Lok Season 1 (Amazon Prime Video)  (Directed by Prosit Roy)

The critically acclaimed neo-noir crime thriller co-directed by Prosit Roy that swept the inaugural Filmfare OTT Awards — including Best Director and Best Series — and placed him firmly among the most important storytellers working in Indian digital today.

Raakh (Amazon Prime Video)  (Directed by Prosit Roy)

Prosit Roy’s latest — an investigative thriller starring Ali Fazal, Sonali Bendre, and Aamir Bashir, premiering globally on June 12, 2026, continuing his defining creative partnership with Prime Video and cementing his ambition to exist equally in the worlds of advertising and long-form cinema.

The Unicorn Films is a rare thing in Indian advertising: a production house that thinks in films, not deliverables. 

This article was part of a special focus on Indian independent creative companies circulated alongside Manifest's June issue, which can be bought here.

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