HOLLYSHORTS 2026 REVIEW! Director Angad Aulakh’s Aurora sends one astronaut hurtling into the loneliest corner of space on a routine mission. The mission hasn’t even begun before doubt starts eating away at our hero.
Commander Freddie Ballard (Guy Kent) has ominous feelings about his next mission into space. In a dream, he’s back home when the phone rings, and he tells his partner (Jennalyn Ponraj) not to answer it, right before a strange vision hits him. He can’t shake the sense that something’s wrong, even though at every turn he’s told there’s nothing to be worried about…almost as if everyone is hiding a secret from him.
His next mission is to travel deep into space to L2 and track down the source of a mysterious signal. When Ballard asks simple questions about the mission, his superiors won’t tell him anything…just do your job. Freddie’s flight hits turbulence, and things go wrong fast. A catastrophic accident leaves him the sole survivor, stranded alone in the farthest reaches of space with no way home.
Freddie Ballard (Guy Kent) stares into the dark, streaked with shadows, in a tense moment from Aurora.
“Commander Freddie Ballard has ominous feelings about his next mission into space.”
Aside from being a compelling sci-fi tale set in the outer reaches of space, there’s more to the making of Aurora. Filmmaker Angad Aulakh wanted to include his Punjabi and Sikh heritage in this story rooted in Western storytelling. He says the wardrobe, the language, the music, and even the casting carry this relatively little-known identity into deep space for Westerners, and it comes through as lived-in rather than explained to the audience.
In pulling together the sci-fi elements while trying to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western audiences, Aulakh drops mythology and spirituality pulled from his own upbringing into a sci-fi survival story about grief and renewal.
Story aside, Aurora is a gorgeous film. Shot on a low budget, the practical effects and interior and exterior sets look prohibitively expensive, all without the use of AI. As a space film, the story isn’t only intriguing in its sci-fi approach to humanity and grief — it also kept me glued to the screen every second. This is how all indie filmmakers should tell stories from space.
Angad Aulakh proves Aurora didn’t need a big studio budget to look like one. It packs dread, big questions, and genuine visual wonder throughout its fifteen-minute runtime. That scrappy filmmaking gives me real hope for the future of indie films.
Aurora screened at the 2026 Hollyshorts Film Festival.
"…almost as if everyone is hiding a secret from him."
