‘Sirât’ review: Oliver Laxe’s long strange trip stars Sergi López

Dir. Oliver Laxe. Spain/France 2025. 115 mins. 

The latest from French-Spanish director Oliver Laxe, Sirât is the proverbial long, strange trip. Part adventure, part mystic-existential odyssey, it is the boldest enterprise to date from a film-maker who has a taste for grappling with the challenges of the real – as witnessed in the flame-steeped vistas of his last film, 2019’s Fire Will Come, set in Galicia. In Cannes Competition title Sirât, he teams Catalan actor Sergi López with a cast of non-professionals exuding pungent ‘real thing’ vibes, in a travelogue drama that raises the ante on his previous Moroccan venture, 2016’s Mimosas.

Laxe brings the control of suspense he displayed so impressively in ’Fire Will Come’

Laxe maintains rising tension throughout, although to frustratingly inconclusve effect and somewhat at the cost of conventional dramatic satisfactions, but the boldness of the undertaking will appeal mightily to cinephiles hungry for movies that take real risks after its Cannes premiere.

The film begins with hefty speaker cabinets hauled into place for a rave somewhere in the Moroccan desert. Amid the partying crowds of crusties, freaks and neo-hippies is a middle-aged man, Luis (López), accompanied by his young son Estebán (Bruno Nuñez) and their gentle-natured terrier Pipa. Luis is searching for his daughter, whom he hasn’t seen for five months. But the rave is broken up by soldiers who evacuate the area, announcing that a state of emergency has been declared. Apparently war has broken out, leading one character to muse, “Is this is what the end of the world feels like?”, and another to reply, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.”

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, Luis and Estebán join a group of not-so-young techno-nomads heading for another rave way across the Sahara, the pair still in search of the missing girl. Luis’s small vehicle isn’t suited to to the rigours of what will be a dangerous journey, but he faces up to tough challenges, and a certain degree of culture clash, as he befriends the self-styled ‘family’ of voyagers. They are played by a quintet (Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Jade Oukid, Richard ‘Bigui’ Bellamy, Tonin Janvier) all using their own first names and apparently representing a version of their real selves.

At first, Sirât seems to follow a very similar path to the voyage of Mimosas, but without the element of Muslim myth. Mysticism is still present, however, the title denoting a path or a bridge, in this case between paradise and hell. After the hedonistic euphoria of the opening rave – with Kangding Ray’s bass-heavy music pumped to the max throughout – the rigours of the road (and off-road) eventually result in a genuinely shocking moment, as the travellers realise that the threat of death is very real. Indeed, this is one of those existential dramas in which – without revealing too much – the protagonists might be said essentially to be already dead from the start.

As the mood intensifies, Laxe brings to bear the control of suspense that he displayed so impressively in Fire Will Come. Sirât could be described as an anarcho-hippie Wages Of Fear – the other comparison being William Friedkin’s 1977 remake Sorceror, given how much Sirât’s music echoes that film’s Tangerine Dream score.

Here is a film that revels in its setting – the keynote set magnificently at the start, with throbbing bass resonating against a sheer wall of ochre cliffs. The shoot itself was presumably a risky undertaking, navigating difficult territory that really comes alive, to variously transfixing and threatening effect. Sirât also makes the most of its cast – the travellers projecting a genuine sun-baked, grizzled sense of having knocked around, even down to a couple of missing limbs (Janvier putting his knee stump to comic use in a rendition of Boris Vian’s song ‘Le Déserteur’). As for López, he speaks considerably less than in most roles, but brings his imposing and affecting presence to a very physical performance, carrying the viewer through a film that genuinely deserves that over-used tag ‘immersive’.