Michael Sheen's Childhood UFO Encounter Lights Up Edinburgh: 'Out There' Arrives as a Welsh Sci-Fi Drama About Grief and the Unknown
Michael Sheen was twelve or thirteen, walking home from school in Port Talbot, Wales, when he saw a formation of lights move toward the sea, hover, and vanish. Decades later, that memory flickers back to life in Out There, a Welsh sci-fi feature that received its world premiere in competition at the Edinburgh Film Festival on 14 August 2026 (The Hollywood Reporter).
Sheen is the name that draws the crowd — his credits span the Twilight franchise, Masters of Sex, and Good Omens — but the film belongs to debut feature-maker Simon Ryninks. Ryninks grew up between Aberystwyth and London and is currently pursuing a master's degree in folklore. He wrote Out There from a more personal place: the idea grew out of his mother's passing and a desire to write something about grief (The Hollywood Reporter).
Set in 1999, the film follows Maz, a young teen amateur astronomer grieving the disappearance of her scientist father. Newcomer Nerys Amber Stocks plays Maz; Iwan Rheon, of Game of Thrones, plays her missing father. Maz recruits help from her best mate Elis (Tom Moya), a UFO-obsessed conspiracy theorist named Bryn (Aneurin Barnard, from Dunkirk), and a local psychic called Shifty Gruff — Sheen's role (The Hollywood Reporter). The film runs 80 minutes and carries a 12A rating (Edinburgh Film Festival).
Wales, as it happens, has a deep history of unexplained sightings. A spate of reports and cover-up rumours swept the country in the 1970s, stretching from the north down to Broad Haven on the west coast. Ryninks, steeped in folklore both academically and personally, folds that regional texture into the story (The Hollywood Reporter).
For Sheen, the project landed close to home. He describes himself as a fan of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Out There gave him a chance to honour his late father — a stalwart of the Port Talbot community who died aged 85. Sheen has also personally funded and taken on the artistic directorship of the newly named Welsh National Theatre, deepening a commitment to Welsh cultural life that this film extends (The Hollywood Reporter).
Behind the scenes, Film Seekers acquired international sales rights ahead of the Edinburgh premiere — the sales agent is the company shopping the film to distributors in overseas territories (Screen Daily). The project was developed with support from Film Hub Wales (Edinburgh Film Festival, Instagram).
What makes Out There stand out is the way it threads a tender, specific grief through the frame of a genre that usually trades in spectacle. A missing father, a girl with a telescope, a psychic with a funny name — the alien lights are almost secondary. The film premiered at Edinburgh. Where it travels next is in the hands of the buyers.
