Sirât

A winner of this year’s Cannes Competition Jury Prize, Sirât is a gripping, visceral, and metaphysical excursion by Galician filmmaker and Festival favourite Oliver Laxe (Mimosas, TIFF ’16; Fire Will Come, TIFF ’19).

Sergi López plays Luis, a man desperately searching for his missing daughter Marina throughout the harsh southern deserts of Morocco, along with his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their dog Pipa. At the film’s beginning — a pulsating open-air rave — the trio drifts through throngs of entranced and sweaty partygoers, handing out flyers with photos. As soldiers move in to shut down the festivities, father and son follow and ultimately join a motley bunch of roving ravers (memorably played by non-professionals) who set out in their van in search of the next party — and hopefully Marina — as hints of impending war multiply.

With swirling dust storms and solar flashes alighting the cinematic landscapes — all stunningly enhanced by director of photography Mauro Herce’s exquisite Super 16mm — and an award-winning, low end–heavy score by techno stalwart Kangding Ray, the gruelling expedition increasingly transforms into a sensorial and hypnotic experience that tests physical and psychological limits.

Simultaneously explosive and introspective — a film in which spirituality and altered states of consciousness exist alongside raw, sober humanity — Sirât, which means “path” in Arabic, explores the ways loss, grief, and violence can imbue life with both intensity and clarity. While many have evoked Mad Max, Zabriskie Point, and The Wages of Fear as cinematic touchstones, the film emerges cult-ready from the singular vision of Laxe, known for his mystical sensibility in probing immaterial truths.

ANDRÉA PICARD

Content advisory: accident trauma, drug use, coarse language, violence