A father, with son in tow, follows a group of ravers to find his missing daughter in the dusty desert of North Africa, in Laxe’s stunning, foreboding road movie about faith and despair, marked by thumping beats, shuffling bodies, and bellowing trucks.
Review #3,046
Dir. Oliver Laxe
2025 | Spain, France | Drama, Thriller | 115min | 1.85:1 | Spanish, French, English & Arabic
Not rated – likely to be NC16 for some coarse language
Cast: Sergi Lopez, Bruno Nuñez, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy
Plot: A man and his son arrive at a rave lost in the mountains of Morocco. They are looking for Marina, their daughter and sister, who disappeared months ago at another rave. Driven by fate, they decide to follow a group of ravers in search of one last party, in hopes Marina will be there.
Awards: Won Jury Prize, Soundtrack Award, AFCAE Award – Special Mention & Palm Dog – Jury Prize (Cannes); Nom. for 2 Oscars – Best International Feature & Best Sound
International Sales: The Match Factory
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Road Movie; Finding Someone; Faith & Despair
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Dust is everywhere. Thumping beats from massive loudspeakers. Bodies shuffle like there’s no tomorrow. And indeed, tomorrow might never come as Sirat is a foreboding work, emphasising the unpredictability of life, set against some massive, if unseen, regional (possibly world) crisis that threatens to erupt into war.
Nuclear war, maybe, such is writer-director Oliver Laxe’s (of 2016’s Mimosas and 2019’s Fire Will Come) use of apocalyptic imagery that is reminiscent of the ‘Mad Max’ movies.
But what is more stunning are the night scenes, as a trio of vehicles traverses through a vast, empty space, their headlights like lasers penetrating the darkness, this time reminiscent of similar scenes in Ceylan’s monumental Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).
‘Sirat’ is Arabic for ‘The Path’, a reference to the Bridge to Paradise in Islamic eschatology. As such, we are somewhere in North Africa (parts of the film were shot in Morocco), as a father (Sergi Lopez), with his young son in tow, follows a group of ravers in hopes of locating his missing daughter.
“There’s nothing but dust here.”
It follows the structure of a road movie, but daringly upends everything in sight. To say more would mean straying from the path. So, I’ll leave Laxe’s vision of faith and despair, of healing and disrepair, of transience and permanence, to guide you in finding something rewarding.
Accompanied by beats-heavy music, from techno-dance to the richly ambient, Sirat is ultimately a work about movement. To move, like the bellowing trucks do, is to feel alive as stasis becomes the enemy of resistance.
So, like the sound waves that reverberate the souls of the intoxicated ravers that opened the film with such trance-like vigour, the characters must chart their own path, both collectively and individually.
Every step of the way is fraught with tension but also the joys of camaraderie, with nods to Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953) and the best of existential Antonioni.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 