TIFF 2025 | Movie Review: "Sirat" Rides The Highway to Hell In Oliver Laxe's Shocking Fourth Feature

10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

If there’s one thing I hate in movies, it’s the trope of some white person travelling to developing countries in the name of “soul-searching”. Whether they know it or not, those fetishistic desires are a form of imperialism and tend to objectify said countries rather than appreciate them. It’s as if they stop being nations and instead become external objects of desire in the minds of the colonizer, where a country and its citizens are more like a playground or a zoo than a real place. French-Spanish director Oliver Laxe’s latest, Sirāt, which won the Jury Prize and Soundtrack Award at Cannes (tied with Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling), is a hypnotically toothy condemnation of neo-colonialism that had me simultaneously entranced and stressed out of my fucking mind.

Set against the backdrop of roving European ravers in the Sahara, Sirāt follows a Spanish father, Luis (Sergi López), and his son Esteban as they search for their missing daughter and sister, only to be joined by fellow Spanish and French ravers on their pilgrimage through the desert. As a Spaniard born in France, Laxe is fully aware of not only the neocolonial connotations with such a setup but also the longstanding damage that Spanish and French colonialism inflicted on Morocco. Luis arrives in the Sahara with his hyper-urban minivan alongside his young son and dog, which are probably three of the worst things to bring with you when you’re going someplace that you don’t politically or topographically understand. In what feels like a genre blend of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, Sirāt is all about geopolitical ignorance and how sticking your head in the sand ultimately does more harm than good. Audiovisual excellence aside, Sirāt is a difficult, nerve-racking watch, but that distress is all the more rewarding once you get the big picture.

Despite how utterly miserable Sirāt is to watch, Laxe lulls you into a trance thanks to composer Kangding Ray’s electro-heavy score that feels like having your brain flossed. Opening on sweaty, sand-soaked bodies moving at their own individual paces and rhythms, I was having my own rave in my seat (while still being respectful of my fellow cinemagoers) as Laxe and Ray slowly guided us through Luis’s unwitting Saharan suicide mission. Long shots of canyons and Moroccan vistas make the music feel reverberative and echoey as people dance in their own little worlds like nobody’s watching, which is its own type of cinematic hypnosis. I’ve seen others deem Sirāt as experimental - and it is experiential, with much of the film’s impact hinging on its slow burn and loud-as-all-hell sound design. Even if the film’s sensorial sound design left me in a near-fugue state, there’s a straightforwardness to Sirāt that makes me hesitant to call this a “wholly sensory experience”. 

Raves are all about altered states, whether that be through inebriation or the hypnosis of dance music, but escapism doesn’t work when the world is falling apart around you. It isn’t explicitly said what military conflict is at the periphery of Sirāt, but that lack of knowledge is channeled through the protagonists’ own ignorance. When a platoon of soldiers disperse a crowd of ravers and say that people from the EU must go home, it has the same vibe as a teen comedy when the cops crash the house party. A radio anchor talks about the looming threat of World War III, only for one of the main characters to turn off the radio before any further context is given. One would call Sirāt apolitical for this perspective, but I think not directly addressing the political state of Morocco is the point that Laxe is trying to make about clueless white people using foreign countries like amusement parks. 

I was hearing pre-fest rumblings about Sirāt being optioned for TIFF’s Midnight Madness slate, and despite it being in the Special Presentations slate instead, it’s clear as to why this was initially deemed Midnight Madness material. A solid forty percent of Sirāt is a hazy trip (figuratively and literally) with enough shock value to elicit a scream from the crowd, but the other sixty percent is the type of movie that I would deem a Best International Feature contender at the Oscars. For those willing to get knee-deep in its uncompromising atmosphere and jumpscare-heavy finale, Sirāt is an entrancing nightmare that’s sure to turn heads and get people talking.