There’s a new existential road movie in movie town. As part of the process of understanding the strangely beguiling Sirāt, a minimalist rogue of a film which has won much love with critics and discerning cinephiles, our minds naturally lean into the comparison game. Aside from the natural parallel to the Mad Max netherworld, director/co-writer Óliver Laxe’s arid yet somehow tension-pumped film can also call to mind Easy Rider, Monty Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop, and Michelangelo Antonio’s classic desert trip-out, Zabriskie Point.
Even so, one of Sirāt’s particular powers is its unique personality, which situates us in a milieu dripping in placesness. We are there, in the rugged, dry expanse of the road in Morocco, with a motley band of characters venturing from one rave to another toward a mysterious destination that, plot spoiler, never quite materializes. Close-up shots of the rough roads and railroad tracks whizzing by are interspersed with scenes of the human story at hand, reminding us that the road itself is a critical character here.
Laxe is clearly onto something, having nabbed the prestigious Cannes festival Jury Prize, top prizes in the Spanish Goya Award, and been anointed by many critics’ Top 10 lists for 2025. But it is an acquired taste kind of film.
Its narrative premise is deceptively simple. We join the story in a desert rave — the first taste of thumping electronica, which sporadically powers the film’s sound landscape (which earned an Oscar nomination). Along comes the proverbial police (or military) breakup of the party. A cast of characters is quickly established: a handful of social misfit nomads, in two desert-ready camper vehicles, hit the road for another distant rave “somewhere near Mauritania.” They are joined by a rumpled father searching for his lost daughter, joined by his young son and their small dog.
Questions and ambiguities arise and are never quite answered, including the unclear appearance of civic/military unrest in the area and the essential question of whether the absent daughter is missing or has simply come of age and left the family nest. Her abstract role in the story reminds us of another Antonioni film, L’Avventura, in which the quest for a missing person itself goes missing in the saga.
All is not a hypnotic journey, though. Actual tragic events, which blow up in the film without warning, metaphorically represent the volatility of life and the random cruelty of fate, in the desert and in the world — especially the world as we presently know it. It’s a minefield out there, despite our personally encoded routes of escapism — a specific reference to another meaningful motif recurring in the film’s view, of hefty speakers in the desert, promising deliverance.
At some point in the film-watching process, you may find yourself wondering what this is all about. Where are the hidden metaphors, and where are we going? The best approach is just to fall into its unique pace and sense of place and appreciate that, as a film, Sirāt is a trip. Literally and otherwise.
Sirāt is playing at SBIFF’s Riveria Theatre. For more information, see sbifftheatres.com
Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/3_9OkHX8ZiA.
