{ Waiting room }

Out There is a delightful '90s-set Welsh sci-fi caper with heart and a hilarious Michael Sheen

It feels fitting in a week where everybody was obsessed with the solar eclipse that a new homegrown sci-fi movie is having its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Out There might not be about eclipses, but it does have a link to a piece of UK history you might not be aware of.

Back in the late 1970s, west Wales became a hotspot for UFOs if you believe the locals. Even acting legend Michael Sheen got involved, being convinced as a 12-year-old that Port Talbot was "very UFO-y" as he recalled to the Scarred for Life podcast in 2025.

That unexpected bit of Welsh history became the inspiration for writer/director Simon Ryninks when it came to his debut feature. But while Out There does have gentle fun with this bit of history, including some excellent local news reports of eyewitness sightings, it becomes an altogether more human story about grief.

Don't worry though, it's not some kitchen-sink drama as it's also a story that features a hilarious Michael Sheen as a drug-dealing psychic, who runs a side hustle in stolen goods with the offer of "buy one, get one".

Set in 1999, Out There centres on 16-year-old amateur astronomer Maz (Nerys Amber Stocks) who becomes convinced that she spots a UFO over her sleepy Welsh seaside town. Not only that, Maz becomes convinced that she spotted the exact same UFO on the night her father (Iwan Rheon) disappeared five years earlier.

Nobody believes her, of course, so Maz teams up with her best mate Little Elis (Tom Moya), local conspiracy theorist Bryn (Aneurin Barnard) and drug-dealing psychic Shifty Gruff (Sheen) to uncover the truth. But are the military really covering up an extraterrestrial truth, or is Maz actually hiding a truth from herself that she's still not ready to face?

You'll likely already know the answer to that, even as Out There cleverly plays up the other possibility. It's a credit to the endearing and sharp performance of Nerys Amber Stocks that you'll want to believe yourself that there's a bigger mystery to be unveiled.

When the truth is revealed in the final act, it's beautifully handled and comes with its own mysterious nod that we might not be alone in the world. Whether you can see it coming or not, you'll still likely get emotional. But the movie doesn't want us to wallow in grief and quickly shifts gears back to its quirky heist caper to get you chuckling again.

As well as ensuring the emotion lands, Ryninks also successfully evokes the 1999 setting that'll make you nostalgic for your family trips to the seaside. It's not just filming on location in Wales, including in Ceredigion county, but also the superb soundtrack that, of course, features Catatonia's late-90s banger 'Mulder and Scully'.

Michael Sheen and Director Simon Ryninks Reveal Their Personal Connections to Welsh Sci-Fi Caper ‘Out There’: “This Really Pushed Buttons for Me”

By the end of our call, Michael Sheen is animatedly sharing stories of his family’s (potential) UFO sightings in south Wales.

He was 12 or 13 when he was walking home from school in Port Talbot. Coming around the side of a nearby mountain was what Sheen describes as “a formation of lights.” They went out toward the sea, hovered there, and vanished. “I was looking at this and I thought, ‘I need to go in and tell the rest of my family,'” the star recalls. “But then I thought that if I go in, I might miss it. So I just stood and watched. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen,” he continues, “I can’t explain it, and I’m not saying that they were UFOs, but I don’t know what the hell they were.”

Sheen, a prolific actor whose credits include Twilight, Masters of Sex and Good Omens, has hopped on Zoom to discuss his latest Welsh project, Out There, a sci-fi caper from debut filmmaker Simon Ryninks that tackles two seemingly disparate themes: grief and aliens. Backdropped by the nostalgia-packed optimism of 1999, it earns its world premiere in competition at Edinburgh Film Festival on Friday, with a star-studded ensemble that includes Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk), Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) and newcomer Nerys Amber Stocks.

Stocks plays a young teen named Maz, an amateur astronomer still grieving the disappearance of her scientist father (Rheon). She is convinced she has spotted something suspicious floating above her sleepy Welsh hometown and recruits the support of her best mate Elis (Tom Moya), UFO-obsessed conspiracy theorist Bryn (Barnard), and local psychic Shifty Gruff (Sheen) to uncover the truth — one far more complex than they might have anticipated.

For Ryninks, this is as personal a story as you can get. “The idea came about from my mum’s passing and knowing that I wanted to write something about grief,” the British filmmaker, who grew up in both Aberystwyth and London, tells THR. “I was returning to west Wales a lot and I feel very connected to her being here. I knew I wanted to do it in a funny, gentle way. Then at a certain point, I discovered the Welsh history with UFO sightings.”

It turns out that Wales has a particularly rich history in the Unidentified Flying Objects department. In the 1970s, there was a spate of sightings and cover-up rumors from across the north of the country all the way to Broad Haven on the west coast. Happening upon this information, for first-time feature filmmaker Ryninks (who is also doing a master’s in folklore), felt like fate. “To use UFOs as this metaphor for searching for something — for closures or answers that are out of reach or elusive in some way,” he says, “I could really relate to that hunt for meaning.”

Sheen, meanwhile, is admittedly always very interested to hear about emerging Welsh voices. He has long been a champion of the arts in his native Wales, personally funding (and becoming artistic director of) the newly named Welsh National Theatre. As a super-fan of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ryninks and Out There were a no-brainer. “Reading this script and seeing [this] journey for Maz, a 16-year-old who starts to [use] the stars and spaceships to reconnect with her father… That journey through grief, but in a very feel-good, heart-warming, coming-of-age story, I thought the combination of those elements and the weird characters she comes across — including the one I play myself — I just love the quirkiness of that,” Sheen says. “[Using] the sci-fi elements as a way to explore things that are much closer to home.”

For Sheen, it was also an opportunity to honor his late father, a stalwart of the Port Talbot community, who died last year aged 85. “The town has a history with the steelworks and real challenges of deprivation,” he adds, “but to look to the skies and to believe there’s something up there is a very powerful metaphor for a lot of things.” Meyrick Sheen was photographed by Roo Lewis in 2023, who set out to capture the town as part of a project for the Port Talbot UFO Investigation Club. “I was very moved by seeing the portrait of my father in that,” says the younger Sheen, “so this script really pushed buttons for me.”

Ryninks was delighted to have enticed such a high calibre of Welsh talent aboard this small indie. He enlisted the help of a friend, English actor Johnny Flynn, who knew Rheon. Rheon was pulled toward the role of Maz’s father, Lew, “as an exciting opportunity to play something a bit different than he’d played before.” For the kooky, mischievous and not-often-sober Shifty Gruff, Sheen was always the number one choice. “He’s got this quality about him, which is both really lovable and funny,” begins the director, “but then you’ve seen him play characters where he’s a bit edgy as well, where you’re not sure if you can really trust this guy. I liked that contrast for Shifty. So I wrote it with Michael in mind, then basically just spent a year hoping and praying he would say yes, like a UFO believer. I just had faith that he was out there, waiting for contact.”

Sheen, an established star with the kind of career freedom you achieve only after decades of acclaim, was up for anything. “I love those shops you go into with all the crystals and the weird UFO-ology books,” he says about Shifty’s mystic store. “I could spend hours in there, knowing full well that it’s all nonsense. But he’s into all that, and also the local drug dealer — all organic, obviously — and I love the combination of him being really dodgy, but [there is] also something really hopeful in him as well. There’s an innocence and naivety to him. [But] you know you’d find him in your living room at a party and think, ‘What are you doing here?’ I’ve definitely met a few Shifty Gruffs in my time.”

These characters had already been living in Ryninks’ mind for five years — it’s been seven since he first decided to make Out There — but he’s still pinching himself that he was able to get such established Welsh talent to take them on. “And Nerys and Tom,” he adds, “who are brilliant up-and-coming, future stars.” He considers some of the other icons he would love to tempt back into Welsh indie cinema: Matthew Rhys, Alexandra Roach, Callum Scott Howells, Morfydd Clark, Taron Egerton and Luke Evans all come up.

Sheen tells THR that if there’s any way he can use his platform to promote and support Welsh directors and writers, he will: “Because they’re the ones who are leading the way for us.” Whether it’s through the Welsh National Theatre (WNT) or Sheen’s production company RedSeam, he is keen to reverse years of industry-wide neglect. “We’ve just got to keep pushing, because for a long time if you had a Welsh project, the people with power would say, ‘Does it have to be in Wales? Could it be set somewhere else?'”

The 57-year-old adds: “And if there was a Welsh leading part, then oftentimes it would go to someone not from Wales. And of course, I’ve played characters from outside of Wales, and that’s fair enough. But when it’s in the context and history of being overlooked, being marginalized, and not getting the chance, I think it’s important to be aware of that.”

Sheen is buoyed by the work done in recent years, with big Hollywood movies shooting in the region and production companies such as Bad Wolf setting up camp there. All the more reason, he thinks, to get Wales on the map. “We’ve got the infrastructure and the locations and the actors — a really rich wealth of stories and history that’s untapped… A lot of that depends on collaboration and people making those connections,” he says about putting his name to projects. “It’s Matthew Rhys going, ‘Yeah, I’ll come down and do a one-man show about Richard Burton to raise funds,'” Sheen beams about Rhys’ 2025 stint in Playing Burton at the WNT.

The Folk Show (with Michael Sheen) - 29/07/2026

Just the parts with MS's comments.

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