Sirat, the latest film from director Óliver Laxe, is like a drug trip gone bad (of which there are plenty in the actual movie). It starts with a simple enough premise – a father, Luis (Sergi López), searches for his missing daughter Mar in secret raves held in the Moroccan desert, his young son Esteban in tow. Subwoofers shake the sand as if the ground is levitating beneath the partiers’ feet, dust rising into the air to create a cloud of ecstasy at a party that would make the citizens of Zion in The Matrix jealous.
Luis eventually attaches himself to a group of ravers who plan to go deeper into the desert to find another party and, though they warn him the road is dangerous, he insists on following them. A fever dream in the bleakest sense, Sirat is a wild and apocalyptic epic, mythological in scale but intimate in its story about family.
Sirat Pulls No Punches
It’s Deeply Sad, Surprisingly Funny & Absolutely Insane
The backdrop of the Moroccan desert is just one layer of the story Laxe is telling – there’s also seemingly a global war breaking out in the background of the film, of which we only hear snippets about from the appearance of soldiers or the occasional radio sound bite. The world might be ending, but Luis and the ragtag group he’s found keep pushing to find the next – and potentially last – party.
Set to a throbbing techno score that rivals Challengers in its fist-pumping energy, Laxe shows us sweeping shots of desert vistas that feel like long-forgotten corners of the world. For lengthy stretches of the film, Luis and the group he’s with rarely encounter other humans, making their reluctant connection all the more sincere.
Tonin, Jade, Bigui, Steff, and Josh grow a liking for Luis and Esteban despite their initial reluctance, and, though the pair set out to find Mar, as time goes on, they seem to forget about this goal as their bond with this new family blooms. That makes Sirat‘s hard-left turn into a bleak tragedy all the more gut-wrenching, even as Laxe layers even more absurdity on top.
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None of this would work without the underlying emotion that Laxe establishes in the first half of the movie. Though the search for Luis’ daughter is the obvious lynchpin of this story, it’s the bond between the desert revelers that truly carries us to the end. Tonin, Jade, Bigui, Steff, and Josh are all in various states of disarray – it’s clear they’ve been living in the sand for some time, surviving off what they can find and all the psychedelics in their arsenal.
But their love for each other is infectious, and it seems to improve the outlooks of Luis and Esteban, even as they race towards oblivion. This group seem to already know that the world is ending and has been for quite some time, but Luis and Esteban’s personal apocalypse in the form of Mar going missing falls to the wayside when they realize all they have in the end is the things that keep them moving forward – one last chance to dance, one last glimpse at a loved one, or one last moment to take in the beauty of the world around them.
Laxe doesn’t let things get too overtly sentimental thanks to the sheer level of violence and mayhem that he inflicts upon these characters, but amid the chaos, it’s hard to ignore the literal beating heart of the film, even when it’s drowned out by psycho-trance drones, the sound of engines firing off, or tires scraping through the dirt.
Sirat premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Sirat
9/10
- Release Date
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June 6, 2025
- Runtime
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115 minutes
- Director
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Oliver Laxe
- Writers
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Santiago Fillol
- Producers
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Agustín Almodóvar, Esther García, Pedro Almodóvar, Oriol Maymó, Xavier Font, Andrea Queralt
