Vague Visages’ Sirāt review contains minor spoilers. Óliver Laxe’s 2025 movie features Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona and Stefania Gadda. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

The vast expanse of the desert in Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt serves as a kind of escape to nowhere for its main characters, a group of five counter-culture ravers and a father, Luis (Sergi López), with son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) in tow, looking for his missing rave-enthusiast daughter. In the middle of driving on a steep cliffside on an extremely rocky road, where even one wrong move could mean death, the radio on their big rig truck announces that World War III has officially started. One of the ravers, Bigui (Richard Bellamy), asks another, Tonin (Tonin Janvier), “Is this how the world is going to end?” Moments later, Tonin replies bluntly, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” The ravers are all European tourists in Morocco and Western Sahara — an occupied territory to the south under Moroccan control — and their demeanor is clearly that of a group of people trying to run and forget their problems, as the world is not important to them anymore. For Luis and Esteban, the love for their missing family member still ties them to some sort of interconnectedness with humanity. 

Laxe posits Sirāt as his most political and radical film. I can understand why he thinks this since it’s his first movie which acknowledges a climate of war and death and actively takes place in a disputed territory (Western Sahara) that is under occupation from a genocidal kingdom (Morocco). But I wouldn’t describe Sirāt as necessarily political or radical in explicit terms. It’s more of a death rattle for the apolitical ambiguity and numbness that sweeps over all of us, even as we watch tragedy after tragedy unfold in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Syria, Kashmir and other places. Laxe has filmed in Morocco before for the stunning and enigmatic Mimosas (2016), which feels like a gust of divine wind that transports viewers into the past. In Sirāt, however, the time is irrevocably of the present and jarringly stuck in a purgatory (or hell) of its own making. Its central characters are all people who live the sort of carefree rebellious lifestyle only afforded to those who have the privilege to do so. They attend raves, treat the Saharan desert as their oasis to paint RV tire tracks across and think of themselves as not just detached from the world but floating above it. 

Sirāt Review: Related — TIFF 2025 Review: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s ‘A Useful Ghost’

Laxe begins Sirāt with an absolute pulse-pounding rave montage of not just a crowd bumping to the music, but the assemblage of speakers and plugging in of electrical cords before the concert begins. The speaker wall looks like a monolith, like some absurd monument out of the mind of artist Michael Heizer by way of the drone metal band Sunn O))). Luis and Esteban are the two odd ones traversing the rave as they hand out flyers of their missing family member. Laxe provides the girl’s backstory throughout the film after the rave is broken up by the Moroccan Royal Army and the ravers hit the road to nowhere. Luis mentions that he hasn’t seen his daughter for five years, while Esteban says his sister never really ran away — she “just left” because she was an adult who could be on her own. There is a fundamental cultural and generational rift between Luis, the ravers and Esteban, both in terms of lifestyle and their outlook. Luis’ steadfastness at finding a daughter who seems to clearly want her freedom is fundamentally opposite of the carefree, “live and let live” lifestyles of the ravers. Their experiences and philosophies become flattened, however, as death’s shadow slowly encompasses their wayward path.

Sirāt Review: Related — TIFF Review: David Cronenberg’s ‘The Shrouds’

What I really appreciate about Sirāt is Laxe’s constant bucking of expectations. One of the greatest narrative machinations of the film is its non-committal interest to seeing a story play out, as the director offers something like Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park (1971) crossed with William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977). There’s a slow realization that this journey has gone completely off the rails and will never will get back to normal. Laxe’s canvas is aggressively monotone, with the harsh tan and beige of sand and dust in all directions; a planar homogenous landscape where everything looks infinite and even the horizon is indistinguishable. From the rugged and unforgiving rocky terrain of the cliffside roadways (where tragedy befalls the group) to the open and flat desert expanse (where shocking surprises take place), there isn’t a single part of Sirāt where viewers can predict how far Laxe will push the envelope with his characters. Some may say the film’s exploitative turns can be considered contrived and even distasteful, but this is a movie about death and consequences in a world of indifference. With its metaphorical conceit, Sirāt forces its characters into holes, tragedies and impossible circumstances that test and aim to break their stubborn resolve and indifference. When the group looks through a rocky hilltop at a road lined with army vehicles, they realize the military is preparing for something much bigger than just breaking up another rave.

Sirāt Review: Related — TIFF Review: Cristian Mungiu’s ‘R.M.N.’

“It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” That statement from Sirāt keeps echoing in my ear, and it’s the only part of Laxe’s film which feels even remotely hopeful. The comfort, or “cope” in internet parlance, of the world having been this way for a long time, that what we’re experiencing right now has happened with this same indifference before, is the only solace Sirāt attempts to offer. I also don’t think it’s necessarily true. Sirāt’s ending might perplex many, but it reminds me a great deal of the climax in Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui’s Peepli [Live] (2010). That film, like Laxe’s 2025 release, also features a culture and group of people marching toward eminent doom. In Sirāt, European tourists suddenly find themselves akin to the indigenous population of Western Sahara. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will die, but it does mean that they will be equal spectators of death — helpless, powerless and lost.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre) is a writer/filmmaker based in Washington, D.C. He has contributed to publications such as Bustle, Frameland and Film Inquiry. Soham is currently in production for his first short film. All of his film and writing work can be found at extrasensoryfilms.com.

Sirāt Review: Related — ‘Once Upon a Time in Calcutta’: A Melancholy Tribute to a Disappearing City