Sirât is a hypnotic, nihilistic trip - you might just love it

Friday, 6 March 2026

Sirât (M, 115 mins) Directed by Oliver Laxe ****½

We are in Morocco. The date looks to be maybe a week or two into our future.

In a vast, sandy plain, a crew of bedraggled volunteers are setting up a sound rig. At first, all we can hear is the thrumming of the diesel generators, but soon enough we cut forward an hour or two. A fleet of vans and buses are parked in a loose circle, and a crowd, hundreds deep, are lost in the familiar pounding of an outdoor rave's techno beats.

Some are grinning and moving in groups. Others are blank-eyed and oblivious to anything but the music. There is an older man with a young boy among them, pleading to be acknowledged. They are handing out flyers to anyone who will take one, and we know, before any dialogue is heard, this must be a notice of a missing person. The man's expression excludes any other possibility.

Sirāt is a drama directed by Óliver Laxe and co-written by Santiago Fillol and Laxe. It follows a father (Sergi López) in search of his missing daughter along with his son and a group of ravers in the deserts of southern Morocco.

A column of army trucks arrive. The generators are shut off and the party-goers are ordered to leave, and to head back to the EU countries they have travelled from. Half-heard radio broadcasts tell us a war has broken out and is threatening to engulf whole continents.

But a few of the crew are in no mood to join a queue to the soldiers’ makeshift checkpoint. They have heard of another rave, miles to the south. And if the world is going to catch fire, that is where they want to be. So two trucks make a break across the desert. And the man and his son, in their tiny van, decide to follow them.

It's a bravura opening 20 minutes or so. Sirât director and co-writer Oliver Laxe sets his scene, introduces us to the players, and primes us for the story that might be about to unfurl. And yet, it's a con. Whatever our expectations, Sirât is not about to become a thriller about a father looking for daughter who has gone missing in the shifting world of outdoor rave culture. Not for long anyway.

As the search for a missing daughter and sister continues, those looking for her venture deeper into the burning wilderness, and the journey forces them to confront their own limits.

A father (Sergi López) and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They are searching for Mar -- daughter and sister -- who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties.

There's a lovely passage by the writer Dan Savage, about the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. '… we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night, and it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”

That quote came back to me, watching Sirât. The characters in this film aren't fighting or protesting, exactly. But they are chasing the dance because it is all there is left to do, and it is the only thing that offers any escape from what their world has become. The climate, politics and economy are all shot to hell and back. But they have each other. And for as long as the diesel lasts, they have a way of travelling - and of powering up the amplifiers for one last rave, as civilisation implodes and collapses around them.

Oliver Laxe has a history of making unforgettable films, often with non-actor casts, about people who don't have a lot to say, but who tell us plenty about themselves with their actions and, maybe, an outburst or two. Sirât slots in nicely after his Mimosas (2016) and Fire Will Come (2019), but I think it is a stronger, more urgent and effective film than either.

Sirât is an hallucinatory and nihilistic trip. It is an allegory, I guess. But also a sketch of one corner of the world, and a few perfectly drawn characters who inhabit it. The cinematography - on 16mm film - is exceptional. The soundtrack, by Kangding Ray, has rightly been nominated for an Oscar this year.

Sirât is the way the world ends, maybe. Not with a whimper. But with a sound track of dance floor bangers, endlessly looping out into a parched valley in the north of Africa. And no one left to hear it.

Sirât is in cinemas now.