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| Director Oliver Laxe |
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| Laxe receiving Jury Prize at Cannes |
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| director on the set |
SIRÂT B France (115 mi) 2025 d: Oliver Laxe
Life is a path that has turns; it has alleys on both sides. Life shakes you; it doesn’t knock at the door. It appears, suddenly shakes you, and asks, “Who are you?” —Oliver Laxe
MAD MAX meets LOST HIGHWAY in this apocalyptic scenario out in the desert, with a touch of Gus Van Sant’s GERRY (2002) and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953) thrown in just for good measure. For anyone who’s seen Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf (2025) or Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025), the story is essentially the same, a father seeking his missing daughter, though the journey couldn’t be more radically different. Using a style that resembles Gaspar Noé, where the adrenaline-pumping, electric techno beat drives the entire film, written by French experimental composer Kangding Ray (aka David Letellier), offering a canvas of EDM sound that matches the vast emptiness of the Moroccan landscapes where the Atlas Mountains meet the Sahara Desert (though predominately shot in the Aragón region of Spain), a place where, preposterously enough, a dance rave is happening out in the middle of the desert, an open-air experience that pulsates with music and frenetic movement, sort of a mix between Coachella and Burning Man, turning into an endless and sleepless party. Using long-held scenes, designed to be a state-of-the-art theater experience, where sound and image gradually blur, the rhythm of the music and the ecstatic movements of the ravers create an atmosphere that feels almost meditative, like a pilgrimage to Mecca, where viewers are lured into this hypnotic trance, yet it’s remarkable how everyone seems to disappear completely in their own physical movement, isolated, and yet connected, laying a subtle parallel with life itself, as we all follow our own path, but still share a common reality. In this scenario, we find Luis (Sergi López, best-known as the sadistic army captain in Guillermo del Toro’s PAN’S LABYRINTH in 2006), his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), and their dog Pipa mingling with the crowd and handing out flyers with his missing daughter Mar’s photo asking if anyone’s seen her, as she vanished months ago at one of these staged raves, SIRÂT by Oliver LAXE - Clip 1 YouTube (2:36). Retracing her steps, they follow the music scene, going from event to event in hopes they’ll run into her, where people are always cordial, but no one’s seen her. There is an ambiguity and lack of specificity that feels intentional, along with undeveloped, barely sketched characters who feel somehow less important than the blend of boldly high-powered music and equally imposing landscapes. In the midst of this all-night party scene, with cars, trucks, and campers parked nearby in what looks like the middle of nowhere, things take a darkened turn when the military shows up and shuts the party down, evacuating everyone while transporting heavy guns through the desert, creating a long convoy of vehicles in what looks like the only way out, but in a sudden shift of tone, two of the vehicles turn away and head off into the desert, with Luis instinctively following them, knowing they are heading for the next rave further south in the desert. This act of defiance makes more sense when we hear radio reports of armed conflict breaking out, a war that threatens their freedom, which can be quickly stripped away in an instant, where music, cinema, and even art can all be forbidden, things we routinely take for granted. This sets the stage for an alarming apocalyptic tone, as what initially appears to be an ode to youth is transformed into an anthem for freedom, where these speeding trucks in the middle of the desert are really all about preserving their freedoms. It’s an eerie atmosphere, doused in the pounding techno music and filtered through an awareness of the catastrophe of our present, adding a youthful presence to what may as well be a march into oblivion.
From the maker of Fire Will Come (O que arde) (2019), which was an audaciously original, near wordless film shot on Super 16mm, with an extraordinary sound design that mixes music with natural and man-made sounds, sometimes indistinguishably, while MIMOSAS (2016) was also a landscape study shot in Morocco, this is a visual spectacle shot on 16mm by longtime Laxe cinematographer Mauro Herce, winner of the Cannes Jury Prize (3rd place), and while operating more on a metaphysical level, the result is terrifying. The dominant force is the pounding, bass-driven musical soundtrack, SIRÂT | Soundtrack, which literally overwhelms viewers with the crowded frenzy of the animated dance movements, with huge speakers set up, like an enormous altar in front of a gigantic rock face, with the sun rising from the orange-colored sandstone cliffs, creating an immersive multisensory experience for an audacious romp into the unknown. A rebellious road trip of epic proportions, our father and son team join forces with punkish rave regulars Jade Oukid as the androgynous-looking Jade with a face tattoo, Stefania Gadda as the worldly Earth mother Stef, Joshua Liam Henderson as the spiked-hair Josh, Tonin Janvier as peg-legged Tonin, and Richard Bellamy as heavily tatted, one-handed Bigui with an arm stump, a group of nomadic outcasts who are psychotropic drug enthusiasts, remnants from a society that had no use for them and spit them out. Matched by the grandiose size of two jigged-up, off-road vehicles, which can crawl just as easily up steep, rock-filled mountain inclines and windswept desert terrains, but Luis has a smaller, old beat-up Citroën van, not really designed for such a harrowing journey, creating an additional hardship for the entire group, as they’re always lagging behind, never exactly sure if they can make it, forcing them to come together as a group, working in unison for the same common goal. With enormous pressure placed on each of the individuals, the journey is fraught with difficulties, always on the verge of their own demise, as the desert becomes a main character in ways we don’t expect, infused with a vast emptiness, where the desolate landscapes have an almost tangible intensity, making it difficult to contend with sunlight, dust, and extreme heat, where the burning air is suffocating, literally overwhelming viewers with a feeling of immense dread, reminiscent of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924). Sirât, according to the Islamic Koran, is a suspension bridge that links hell with paradise, described “as thin as a hair and as sharp as a knife,” where only the righteous will be able to cross the bridge, while the unjust will fall into eternal darkness, with much of this film feeling like the characters are stuck in purgatory in search of the promise of a road that will lead them out of the desert without being detected by the military. None of them have any idea where they are, existing in a no man’s land, thwarting all expectations by avoiding main roads, as the journey becomes both a physical and spiritual reckoning somewhere between life and death, memory and myth, always accompanied by an overwhelming presence of grief. This is intentionally provocative cinema, designed for extreme visceral reactions, while continually catching viewers off guard. Blending professional and non-professional actors, this adds a raw authenticity, where much of this feels like a hallucinatory experience, finding themselves continually stuck in limbo in an unforgiving landscape, offering no shelter or shade, where catastrophe strikes with increasing regularity.
Co-written by Laxe and Argentine screenwriter Santiago Fillol, shrouded with mystery and abstraction, this is an existential meditation on getting lost, a spiritual and physical odyssey where all exits out have failed, finding themselves on a relentless way of no return, but the journey only grows more harrowing, with the desert suggesting freedom is a mirage, as things only grow more perilous, having a similar futuristic vibe with Alfonso Cuarón’s apocalyptic, end of the world scenario in Children of Men (2006). Radio broadcast reports that a distant World War III-like global conflict is taking place, making the world they left behind in extreme peril, seemingly having no present or future, living in the shadow of unseen threats, while at the same time they are besieged with an everpresent mortal danger, forced to climb perilous cliffs, where one wrong move can mean plunging to their death, running dangerously low on food and fuel, surrounded by one pitfall after another, feeling more like a nightmarish dream scenario, yet this is their hellish Terra incognita reality that they’ve inadvertently wandered into, where they’re rapidly falling into the deadly quicksand-like hazards of a parallel world. An exploration of contemporary indifference, these characters do not seem to care or want to listen to news from the “outside world,” which has rejected them their entire lives, damaged beyond belief, so creating their own alternative lifestyle is what matters, exemplified by this group of outcast ravers who are running away and trying to forget their problems, as the world is not important to them anymore, yet the more this small community of only a few stragglers is challenged, hopelessness inevitably seeps in. An overwhelming sense of dread and an all-consuming fatalism affects both participants and viewers alike, engulfed in a doomsday scenario, with Bigui at one point asking Tonin, “Is this how the world is going to end?” His reply is equally shocking, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” The film marks a significant shift in Laxe's filmography, delving into a more political and radical narrative than his previous works. As we watch tragedy after tragedy unfold in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Mynamar, and other places, the film emerges from an intense search for freedom in places it doesn’t exist, where evacuation becomes the norm, as entire displaced communities coalesce around borders, mixing religions, cultures, and languages, altering the look of society as we know it, more dispersed and disoriented, mirroring the refugee crisis and the growing displacement of millions of people, recalling Christian Petzold’s 2018 Top Ten List #3 Transit (2018), which is a reflection of contemporary anxieties, the plight of the displaced, and the search for sanctuary in a world actively hostile to it. Exploring the consequences of apathy, Laxe has created a metaphor for the last safe refuge left on earth, where they can still live a rebellious and carefree lifestyle, with no one rendering judgments, yet this film strips away that last safe place, questioning where detachment from the world leads you, imagining just what’s left in the end. The film feels aggressively one note, infused with a suffocating nihilism mirrored by the continuous beige color of the rocks and desert sand literally surrounding us in all directions. With no backstory provided to suggest how we arrived at this point, maybe it doesn’t matter, as there’s a slow realization that nothing will ever be the same again. This is a European counterpoint to Paul Thomas Anderson’s dystopian America in One Battle After Another (2025), where perhaps both filmmakers are trying to tell us is that we’ve already arrived at a point of no return.
