Exhuberantly directed by Óliver Laxe and co-written by Santiago Fillol and Laxe, Sirat is a thrilling existential road movie that keeps viewers at the edge of their seats for the duration of the ultra-sensorial adventure.
Grade: A (***** out of *****)
My second favorite film of 2025, following The Secret Agent.
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Spanish release poster
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The tale’s premise is seemingly simple, centerng on Luis (Sergi López), a middle-aged father, who, accompnaied by his younger son, is in desperate search of his missing daughter.
(This is same idea as that of John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers, starring John Wayne, and, visually, Sirat also recalls Ford’s Monument Valley westerns).
In the first scene, a large, diverse group of people are dancing ferociously to the tune of electronic music in a rave that takes place in the vast southern deserts of Morocco.
Luis and son Esteban handle flyers with the photo of the missing woman (their daughter and sister Mar) to the attendees of the dance party, but none recognizes her.
A subgroup of ravers tell Luis and Esteban that another rave is taking place afterwards, deeper in the desert, and that the missing woman might be there.
A group of soldiers dissolves the rave and orders the Europeans to evacuate. A small cotterie of ravers (Stef, Jade, Tonin, Bigui, Josh) manages to escape from the convoy line in two vans. Luis and Esteban follow them in their smaller van together with their dog Pipa.
Suddenly, a radio reports that armed conflict between two countries (unidentified) has started. The ravers try to dissuade Luis and Esteban from following them, but the stubborn duo persist.
Heading south to a location “close to Mauritania,” the group shares mishaps and bonds, growing closer through events like Luis helping to pay for the ravers’ fuel, Pipa falling ill (having eaten the ravers’ feces, which is contaminated by LSD), the group crossing a river with their vehicles.
In due course, the newly formed group get to know each other, sharing food and fuel, and Tonin improvising a musical number while using his leg stump to perform sort of puppetry show.
Then a radio broadcast reports that a World War III–like conflict is taking place. While crossing a mountain pass, one of the vans gets stuck in a rut. While freeing the vehicle, Luis’s compact van rolls backward off a cliff with Esteban and Pipa inside, killing them both.
A shocked, grief-stricken Luis walks into the desert alone, kicking and screaming before he is rescued by Jade and Stef.
The remaining members drive further into the desert looking for help. They encounter, in the middle of nowhere, a nomadic herder, but he ignores them and moves away.
To lift their spirits, the group uses a psychoactive drug and improvises a rave in the desert with two loudspeakers. While in uncontrollable trance, Jade steps on a land mine and dies. Trying to get Jade, Tonin is killed by stepping on another mine.
Realizing they have stepped into a minefield, the remaining members are determined to reach a mine-free rocky area nearby. They send one van without a driver to drift forward, but the van explodes after hitting a mine. They repeat the same operation with a second van, but it changes direction before exploding activating a second mine. The much reduced group is now left with no vans!
Unfazed, Luis walks a straight line into it. Bigui follows him and dies after hitting another mine. With great hesitation, Stef and Josh follow suit slowly, with their eyes shut, reaching Luis. We sigh with relief.
In the last shot, the trio is seen crossing the desert on the roof of a train full of people. It’s unclear–and also unimportant what’s the destination of these survicors, who may be brave or just lucky to exist. The road continues….
Besides Sergi López and Bruno Núñez, none of the cast members were professional actors. They were selected in a street-casting process, led by the producers (the Almodovar brothers) and costume designer Nadia Acimi.
Startlingly original, and both hilarious and disturbing in equal measure, Sirat world premiered to great acclaim in competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Fest, where it won the Jury Prize.
Laxe has referred to the film as his “most political” and “most radical” work, and we can see why. Relyng on minimal dialogue, the text builds up tension through an hypnotic appeal to the senses. In its extreme sensorial and visceral mode, Sirat is unmatched by any other film, American and other, seen all year.
The production team faced intense heat and sandstorms while shooting in Morocco (and Spain), on Super 16mm film.
Evading any classification, Sirāt relies on Laxe’s personal vision of what cinema can do. He had obviously seen George Miller’s Mad Max saga, especially Fury Road, as well as Clouzot’s 1953 Wages of Fear, which won the Cannes Fest top prize, and was later remade (unsuccessfully by William Friedkin as Sorcerer).
Structurally, the narrative suggests a series of dichotomies, Man vs. Nature, the Indvidual vs., the Collective, and the world, the Particular vs, the Universal, the Intimate vs. the Cosmic—and, ultimatley, Life vs. Death.
Sirāt offers the kind of sensorial, turbulent experience from which it is difficult (or impossible) to emerge unscathed or indifferent, even though there’s little info about the members’ personalities and backgrounds.
I dont wish to oversell the picture, but suffice is to say that Sirāt uses the unique properties of cinema language to create and then sustain an unparallel level os tension and suspense. There is no telling where the story is going, and which members are going to survive.
Inevitably, while watching the open land, vast expanses of desert sands, we recall David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia.
Sirāt is a brilliantly bizarre road movie, in which the journey is more important than the (unknown) destination. I will not be surprised if it becomes a cult picture or midnight favorite
Mauro Herce’s cinematography and especially Kangding Ray’s sound and score systems are distinguisged, and have already been cited by critics, such as the L.A. Film Critics Association.
Following Cannes premiere, Neon acquired the film for distribution in the U.S., while Mubi (which owns The Match Factory) acquired it for other countries.
It was later selected as the Spanish submission for the 2026 Best International Feature Oscar.
Made on a budget of €6.5 million (about $8 million), Sirāt is getting rave reviews wherever it plays and should be Laxe’smost commercially popular movie.
Cast
Sergi López as Luis
Bruno Núñez Arjona as Esteban
Richard Bellamy as Bigui
Stefania Gadda as Stef
Joshua Liam Henderson as Josh
Tonin Janvier as Tonin
Jade Oukid as Jade
