You’re Better Off Knowing Nothing Going Into Sirāt
The Oscar-nominated rave thriller has one of the most shocking turns of the year.
There’s a moment about midway through Sirāt, Oliver Laxe’s searing desert rave thriller, that instantly sucks all the air out of the room. This is precisely what happened when I saw the Oscar-nominated Spanish film at the New York Film Festival in September: a pall settled over my audience as soon as it dawned on everyone what was about to happen. A few shocked gasps slipped out, and you could almost collectively hear everyone’s hearts stutter for a split second.
Then all hell breaks loose, and Sirāt transforms from a dusty desert odyssey into a horrifying descent into hell. To tell you anymore would give away the whole thing, but I can stress to you that Sirāt is worth seeing knowing nothing else.
Nominated for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, Sirāt is not the typical awards contender. Grimy, electric, and utterly transfixing, Sirāt feels a couple of steps removed from an exploitation thriller, one that has more in common with strung-out genre movies than arthouse films.
The film opens at a rave in the deserts of southern Morocco, the pulsating beats provided by electronic artist Kangding Ray immersing us completely in the sweaty catharsis of rave culture. The opening dance scene goes on for so long that it casts a hypnotic spell over the viewer, even when the bass-y vibrations fade as we cut to Luis (Sergi López) tentatively approaching ravers with a picture of his missing daughter, Mar. Luis had heard that Mar had run away to a rave in Morocco, and has rented a dingy van and brought his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their dog along with him on the search. The thrumming electronic music continues in the background as Luis and Esteban diligently ask as many people as they can about the whereabouts of Mar, the bright desert sun fading to dusk all the while.
But their search — and the rave — is brought to a sudden halt when a group of soldiers arrives and orders the ravers to evacuate, in the wake of an escalation of armed conflict between two neighboring countries. Luis and Esteban at first obediently join the long line of cars being escorted by the armed soldiers away from the rave grounds, but when they see two vans breaking away from the masses, Luis instinctively starts to follow them. The hardcore ravers — Stef (Stefania Gadda), Jade (Jade Oukid), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Bigui (Richard Bellamy), and Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson) — try to dissuade Luis and Esteban from following them, but eventually reveal that they’re headed to another rave deeper in the desert. Convinced that they may find Mar there, Luis and Esteban insist on following, and the ravers reluctantly agree to guide them. Thus, as tinny radio reports ominously warn of the world descending into WWIII, our strange, winding desert odyssey.
Luis and Esteban search for their missing daughter and sister.
Sirāt feels remarkably spectacular and daunting for how small its scale truly is. Perhaps it’s because it starts as a relatively intimate journey, as Luis and Esteban become closer with this ragtag group of ravers, who are all played by non-professional actors. The ravers, covered in days of grime and sporting multiple piercings and tattoos, bring a rawness to the movie and belies its rather calculated emotional beats. But even as Sirāt makes its way to its fated point of no return, you can’t help but fall in love with the outcast lifestyle of the ravers, who warmly share their supplies, offer a few hallucinogenic substances, and warmly welcome Luis and Esteban into their offbeat found family.
That sweet found family offers a much-needed anchor as the group descends deeper into the desert, where the ruthless elements start to wear away at them. Laxe conveys an awe at the ruthless majesty of nature, which only becomes more prevalent as the film goes on. By the time Sirāt reaches its heartstopping climax, that awe transforms into terror as our protagonists realize how truly helpless and small humans are in the face of forces that are so much bigger than themselves.
At one point, one of the ravers wonders whether they’ve accidentally stumbled into hell and are trapped there. Perhaps even dancing ecstatically at the end of the world offers us no respite. It’s a bleak note upon which Sirāt ends, and one that is likely to leave the viewer rattled for hours after the credits roll.
