Sirāt (2026)

Nominated for Best International Feature at this year's Oscars, Oliver Laxe's Sirāt lost out to Sentimental Value. More importantly, Sirāt was overlooked for Best Picture which, now having seen the film, makes me despair of the Academy even further. Sirāt is quite unlike anything I've ever seen before, although I'm not too familiar with Laxe's work, something that needs to change as soon as possible. It's is a blast on the senses, and needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible. The central story surrounds a father, Luis (Sergi Lopez) hunting for his daughter at a rave in the in the middle of the Moroccan desert with the help of his young son Esteban. Sirāt is shot in such a way that manages to combine the often literal wall of sound it unleashes with an astonishing wave of never-ending desert landscape, hinting at foreboding subtext and providing us with un underlying sustained degree of menace.

It's not the first time Laxe has delved into the dry basin of North Africa; Morocco was also the backdrop to his 2010 debut feature, You Are All Captains. Audiences might be more familiar with his 2016 follow up Mimosas, yet Sirāt might well be his crowning achievement. Despite the plaudits heaped on Sirāt during awards season, there are critics that have taken against it, labelling it something that eventually plods into rather dull perdition. I have to disagree with this assessment. Laxe's film is a musing meditation on our own morality set to a thumping techno score with powerful sections of sound and human emotion in which the characters themselves seem to touch the afterlife. Perhaps they're already in it- at the very least, Sirāt toys with the idea of the desert playing the role of purgatory itself. After Luis has no luck at the rave that opens the film, he and Esteban wind up joining a ragtag convoy of ravers who are en route to the next rave in Mauritania, one that his daughter also might be attending. Death is a spectre in almost every scene, never more so when the group must traverse treacherous mountain terrain to avoid army conveys. It's the army that break up the first rave due to an unexplained 'war', one that seems to be threatening to become World War III; a storyline always in the background of Sirāt and never explained. Neither does it need to be. Laxe leaves much to the audience's imagination, and for me personally it was impossible not to be swept up in the mystery of what was unfolding. Every time the score kicks in, you feel another rush of adrenaline and another flood of potential answers to questions make themselves heard. This is visceral, challenging cinema, and you can either allow yourself to be drawn into it, or shrink back entirely. The very word 'sirāt', as the opening title card informs us, is an Islamic term referring to the bridge we might pass between heaven and hell. Which suggests that perhaps everything that unfolds during the film happens on said bridge. With this potential analogy and hazardous mountain passages, it's impossible not to think of William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), another film whose characters arguably inhabit purgatory for its duration. Another inevitable touchpoint would be George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), although Sirāt is certainly a piece of film making that makes you think about its chaos in more methodical ways. Laxe once more uses relative unknowns for his cast, and each of them do a terrific job in pulling you into he eccentricates of their characters. Bigui (Richard "Bigui" Bellamy), Jade (Jade Oukid), Steff (Stefania Gadda) and Tonin (played by real life street performer Tonin Janvier) are all hugely convincing as a group of friends traversing the landscapes who have evidently known each other for years. Lopez is sublime as Luis, a man clearly bedraggled and perhaps resigned to his seemingly hopeless quest in finding his daughter. Sirāt might well be the ultimate road to nowhere, but what exactly that means and how it all unfurls is very much left to audience interpretation. In some ways it's understandable why people have taken against the film, but it's equally clear why it's been lauded. I found it intriguing on a first viewing, and have not stopped thinking about it since; always a sign that a film has gripped you in a good way. If you get the chance to see it in the cinema, it's an opportunity that can't be passed up. Laxe's film is something to be truly engulfed in and bombarded by, in all its sonic vastness and visual imagery. It's really something. 8.4/10