Michael Sheen stars in UFO comedy after spooky sighting in Port Talbot

When Sheen returned to the area with his family in 1977, having lived for a while in Liverpool, he was told that his neighbour had seen “a UFO hovering over her back garden”.

“I got told this, at the age of eight, about this woman who lived next door who was clearly very sensible, so I totally believed this,” he told the Scarred For Life podcast, external in 2025.

Then, at 12 years old, after getting off the school bus, he recalled seeing “something coming round the edge of the mountain, in the distance”.

“I stopped, and this light came out and then two lights behind it, and then three lights behind. A sort of phalanx of lights coming from behind the mountain and floating out over the sea,” he said.

“As I’m standing there, I’m thinking, those are UFOs. I’m fairly certain those are UFOs.

“But I knew if I went in [to the house], they might disappear, so I just stood there transfixed and I watched them come all out, all over the ocean, and then they stopped, and then they all disappeared.

“No-one believed me, obviously.

“I have since heard that other people have seen things in Port Talbot, so I think there’s some sort of thing going on there.”

Out There is the debut feature film from director Simon Ryninks, who said the film “couldn’t ever be set anywhere else” but Wales.

“After my mum passed away, I found myself returning frequently to west Wales, where our family is from,” he told BBC Wales.

“I wanted to set something in that landscape as a way of reconnecting with her and to write about grief with humour and a lightness of touch.”

It is produced by Tibo Travers of Sweetdoh Films and Katie Dolan of Bad Cat and stars Welsh actor Nerys Amber Stocks as main character Maz, who becomes convinced that the mysterious UFO sighting holds the key to her father’s disappearance.