Kohn has said "I really thought of "Manda Bala" as a non-fiction "RoboCop" depicting a very real, broken, and violent society." It premiered January 20, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary and the Excellence in Cinematography award. It had a limited release in North America beginning on August 17, 2007. On March 18, 2008, "Manda Bala" won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking at the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors.