In the stunning opening sequence of Sirat, sound waves from huge speakers slam rock faces that date back to antiquity. Ravers gather in front of a DJ truck, their electronic god, their stoned bodies moving rhythmically in a quasi-religious trance.
The crowd includes two outsiders to the scene. Spanish national Luis (Sergi Lopez) is at the rave in the Moroccan desert to look for his missing daughter Mar. Luis is accompanied by his younger son Estaben (Bruno Nunez Arjona) and their dog. The ravers point to a second event taking place in another part of the desert.
Luis accompanies a group of European revellers to that event, hoping to find a daughter who perhaps doesn’t want to be found. The rave culture is alien to Luis – the music all sounds the same to me, he confesses. Yet, Luis and his son Esteban forge bonds with the diverse group – much needed when the journey takes hellish turns.
Oliver Laxe’s fourth feature won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025. Nominated for two Oscars – Best International Feature Film and Sound – Sirat is out on MUBI.
A small screen barely does justice to the expansive visuals or the sensitive sound design. Filmed to be a sensory experience and unfolding as a nightmare, Laxe’s third feature is a mesmerising account of foreigners barrelling through a forbidding landscape.
Flashes of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point and The Passenger streaks through the harsh sun that pounds on the travellers. The desert is unforgiving and enigmatic too, refusing to yield its secrets. Mar could well have been swallowed up by one of the massive speakers that symbolise the disconnect between the ravers and their chosen party destination.
Is this end of the world, one of the ravers asks. The end of the world started a long time ago, another replies. The men and women are contemporary iterations of European travellers from centuries ago who landed up in exotic outposts for salvation, but instead found hostility and even horror.
As Luis and the group drive through increasingly bedevilling terrain, the 114-minute film’s allegorical themes of colonisation, unending wars and Western decadence come into view. Laxe’s grip on the sudden tonal shifts is iron-tight, leading to a shocking and then transcendental climax.
Laxe’s empathy for the travellers is as strong as his understanding of what is happening to them, and why. The loudspeakers that entrance the ravers stick out in the desert like monoliths from some other planet, the woofers taking on sinister tones.
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