Mandala: The UFO Incident: Ajay Sarpeshkar’s Kannada sci-fi film gets a US release

The US-based filmmaker is yet to find a digital streaming partner for his film that stars Kiran Srinivas, Sharmiela Mandre and Prakash Belawadi, among others

A still from the film

It’s taken filmmaker Ajay Sarpeshkar a lot of effort and his hard-earned money to give wings to his dreams of making a sci-fi film in Kannada. Despite the tight resources, he managed to present the film, Mandala: The UFO Incident, to audiences in early March with a limited theatrical release. The film, according to Ajay, was planned as an origin story, as his desire is to make a trilogy of it, provided the economics work out for him.

A science enthusiast, Ajay based his film on the possibility of a UFO sighting and alien presence, not in far off USA, as we’ve been so used to seeing in endless Hollywood movies, but literally in our backyard – Mysuru. His film had Sharmiela Mandre as an aerospace engineer who stumbles upon data that leads her to believe of alien presence in close proximity. But before she can scientifically prove her claim, she goes missing, presumably abducted by the aliens. In the end, Ajay presents an interesting twist in the narrative and a good starting point for further stories to be told.

Also starring Kiran Srinivas, Prakash Belawadi, Sudha Belawadi and Anant Nag in pivotal roles, Mandala: The UFO Incident, is yet to find a streaming partner, with Ajay ruing that a mainstream platform gave his film a hard pass in favour of ‘bigger’ titles, despite the fact that Mandala: The UFO Story had favourable reviews.

Read our review: Mandala The UFO Incident review: Ajay Sarpeshkar boldly goes where no one else has with this sci-fi tale

In the meantime, the filmmaker is doing his best to get his film as much of an audience as possible. Towards this, he has managed to secure it a US release, with the film set to be in movie halls across the country from May 19. Ajay is hopeful that with more positive word-of-mouth publicity, he will be able to bring his film to a streaming platform shortly.

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