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AURORA Explores Grief, Faith and the Unknown at the 27th Malibu Film Festival

October 17, 2026

Angad Aulakh’s sci-fi short AURORA, starring Guy Kent, explores grief, faith and the unknown at the 27th Malibu Film Festival in Beverly Hills.

Malibu, CA (The Hollywood Times) 10/16/26 – Science fiction has always looked toward the stars to ask questions about life here on Earth, and filmmaker Angad Aulakh takes that approach with AURORA, a 15-minute short selected for the 27th Malibu Film Festival, taking place this November at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Theater in Beverly Hills.

Starring Guy Kent as Commander Freddie Ballard, AURORA follows an astronaut stranded in the distant reaches of space after a catastrophic accident. What begins as a fight for survival gradually shifts into something more introspective as Ballard encounters a mysterious presence and is forced to confront grief, mortality, faith, and the possibility of something beyond the world he knows.

AURORA is less interested in conventional science-fiction thrills than it is in creating a meditation on loss and what gives life meaning. Its deliberate pace and spiritual approach may not resonate with every viewer, but there is no question that Aulakh is reaching for something personal and ambitious.

One of the film’s most distinctive elements is the way Aulakh incorporates his Punjabi heritage and Sikh faith into a genre where those cultural perspectives are rarely represented. Punjabi language, music, wardrobe, mythology, and spirituality are woven into the story without turning the characters’ identities into an explanation for the audience.

That personal connection became even deeper during production. Aulakh has spoken about experiencing the loss of a parent as well as losing a home during the Los Angeles fires while developing the project. Those experiences inform the film’s interest in survival, renewal, time, and the ways people attempt to move forward after profound loss.

Guy Kent gives the film its emotional center, carrying much of the story through isolation and uncertainty. The expansive cinematography by Emmy-winning cinematographer Charlie Wuppermann also gives the short a scale that feels considerably larger than its running time.

The film’s selection for the Malibu Film Festival comes amid growing recognition. AURORA has received nominations for Best Sci-Fi Short and Best Visual Effects at FilmQuest, along with a Delta Award nomination for Best Sci-Fi Short at the Festival of Fantastic Films UK. Additional festival selections include the Anomaly Film Festival and Toronto Arthouse Film Festival.

Critics have also responded enthusiastically. Joey Moser of The Contending called AURORA “a dazzling experience…lyrical in its beauty and boundless in its scope,” while Steve Kopian of Unseen Films praised its imagery, writing that it “has images that surpass the vast majority of what Hollywood has turned out in the last decade.”

Guy KentProduced by longtime collaborators Aulakh and Kent under their Last Carnival banner, AURORA marks their third film together following the Oscar-qualified The Atomic Dream and Oscar- and BAFTA-qualified Resurrektor. Their previous collaborations have collectively earned 33 festival awards and 49 nominations.

The filmmakers are also developing AURORA as a proof of concept for a potential feature.

Perhaps most importantly, AURORA is clearly the work of filmmakers willing to take a creative risk. It asks viewers to contemplate some very large questions in a very short amount of time: What do we hold onto after loss? What do we release? And when confronted with something we cannot understand, where do we place our faith?

The answers may be different for everyone.

As AURORA arrives at the 27th Malibu Film Festival, audiences will have another opportunity to experience a science-fiction story that looks beyond the stars to explore the deeply human emotions that connect us all.

AURORA