Film Review: ‘Sirât’, a Hypnotic Desert Odyssey

The 20-minute single shot opening sequence of director Oliver Laxe’s Sirât has the granular texture of a documentary – there is a palpable sense of the shimmering heat, the swirling dust of the vast desert, the colours dissolving into the horizon against the mountains at dusk and the clamour of a sea of bodies gyrating to the beats of a throbbing techno score by experimental electronic music producer Kangding Ray. A weathered Luis (Sergi López), his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjon), and their terrier weave through the swarms of ravers handing out missing person flyers for their daughter/sister Mar who disappeared without trace at a rave in Morocco several months ago. The party is soon disrupted by the arrival of soldiers who ask EU citizens to evacuate because a war has broken out. One of the party-goers says, “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” Another replies: “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.”

When it comes to genre and narrative structure Sirât – a winner of the Jury Prize at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival – evades simple categorisation. There are elements of a road trip film and a survival thriller, but it is also very much its own fever dream defined by formal risk-taking, which is a remarkable feat for a low-budget arthouse film. The title draws from Pul e Sirat, a metaphorical bridge in Islamic belief that is thinner than a strand of hair, sharper than a sword and hotter than fire that every individual must cross on the Day of Resurrection, suspended over hell with paradise waiting at the other end. Laxe has alluded to the title taking on the literal meaning of the word which means to travel or to be on a journey. However, there is equal focus on the existential passage of the characters across a perilous desert and being suspended between destruction and renewal.

After being unsuccessful in their quest to locate Mar, Luis and Esteban decide to follow a cabal of ravers on a long journey across the Moroccan desert in search of the next party. Laxe and his co-writer Santiago Fillol provide little exposition about any of the film’s characters; this is a narrative almost without a backstory. Among the ravers are five central characters playing versions of themselves: Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, and Richard “Bigui” Bellamy. Laxe’s decision to cast non-professional actors was driven by a desire to find a group that had radical coherence. He has expressed wanting to detach the film from the decadent interpretation of the punk movement, like Burning Man festival, which he deems to be performative celebrations of ego. The corporeal is centre stage in Sirât, not just in terms of the fluid movements of bodies but also their imperfections. Many of the ravers have a distinct physical presence in the form of missing limbs and a sinewy appearance. These scars or mutilations allude to a sense of absence which echoes the more literal absence in Luis and Esteban’s lives.

The initial two-thirds of Sirât set up a contrast between Luis’ desperation in locating his daughter and the ravers’ free spiritedness but it is also a reaffirmation of the quicksilver nature of human interaction. This is especially true in a time of existential terror, the way that so much of the connection that flows between people may be transient, multiple, ambivalent, but ultimately very beautiful. But the genius of the film is in its third act: in how it plays with tension and release and the divergence of the characters’ states. Luis begins to embrace his detachment from the world at the same time as the untethered ravers become eager to rejoin it.

The world of Sirât has a timeless quality. It doesn’t seem to unfold against the currents of capitalism or conflict or a pandemic but there are echoes of a parallel world through the muffled waves of the radio. The news warns of an unidentified escalating conflict, depleting resources and a breakdown in diplomatic relations. These slivers of information may be fragmentary but it’s easy to find parallels to the world we now inhabit. ​​I got the distinct sense that despite the drifting news that enters and fades from the character’s lives, Sirât has profound political underpinnings that remain somewhat underexplored. It also functions as a critique of a form of neo-colonialism, of Europeans wandering through contested, remote regions on Earth, oblivious to its history, using it as a dance floor. 

The seemingly infinite desert that the characters traverse is not merely a backdrop but a vital entity in Sirât. Through the lens of cinematographer Mauro Herce, the desert is magisterial and otherworldly. The 16mm lens contributes to a sense of tangibility enveloping the audience into the physical environment the same way the soundscape summons us into the audible. The sound design and music score is vital to the storytelling imbuing the images with a supernatural quality. Kangding Ray’s soundtrack, composed over a span of 18 months before shooting began propels the film, a testament to the respective power of the images and of the music but, more than that, to their inseparability.

I was most struck by a scene where one of the characters comes across a small TV screen and gazes intently at a group of pilgrims walking in counterclockwise circles around the circumference of the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca. This is a common ritual during the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. A soulful recitation of Surah Maryam (passages in the Quran about Mary) reverberates in the background. I understood this detail as a reference to how countercultural dance practices often exist in relation to ancient religious rituals even though all sacred elements are lost for the sake of hedonism. In this, raving becomes a way to blur the boundaries between self and other; how these characters strive for epiphany or their version of religious ecstasy, a key element of Islamic mysticism. Laxe has commented that one of his inspirations for the film came from Nietzsche: “I would believe only in a god who could dance.”

The fact and meaning of life and death looms large in Sirât, not as a question hurtling towards an answer but as a philosophical strand waiting to be unspooled. As the film progresses, the idea continues to shapeshift. Laxe is committed to making us feel the shape of absence, the slow arc of bereavement and how to derive meaning and pleasure from the accumulation of sounds and images, rather than the execution of beats along character and narrative arcs. This is cinema at its most stimulating, immersing the spectator in a world somehow simultaneously utopian and dystopian.

Rida Bilgrami is a writer based in London. Her work spans poetry, essays and reported features with a focus on travel, books, visual culture and cities. Read more of Rida’s work on Something Curated here.

All images courtesy Sirât.