'Sirat': Spaniard Oliver Laxe seeks the Palme d'Or at a desert rave

Families, unlike dangers, are found where one least expects them. Sirat , the latest film by Oliver Laxe , competing for the first time in the Official Section of the Cannes Film Festival , speaks of unlikely families, broken families, crippled families, makeshift families. Sirat begins with a father ( Sergi López ) searching for his missing daughter, which leads him to a rave in the Moroccan desert . The man's fearful look betrays him as unlikely in this environment of trance music and acid. The man's determined look betrays him as tireless in his mission. He is accompanied by his pre-adolescent son ( Bruno Núñez ) and his dog, a family crammed into a minivan to face the desert, which is uncertainty.

When the Moroccan army breaks up the party, the father decides to follow a small group of ravers They are marching toward another celebration at the other end of Morocco, where their daughter may be. At the other end of an almost mythical Morocco, where the almost unreal landscape prevails like a limbo that decides the fate of those who cross it. Sirat, in Arabic, means the bridge over hell that all people must cross on Resurrection Day. In other words, a sort of Stations of the Cross to achieve enlightenment, learning. As in a parable, as in a film—because what is cinema if not a parable?—the journey through the desert helps the protagonist reach a state of consciousness that can only be achieved through faith, drugs, or trauma.

Born in Paris, raised in Galicia and closely linked to the Maghreb landscape, Oliver Laxe's career has grown under the auspices of Cannes , which selected his debut feature, Todos vos sodes capitáns (2010), for Critics' Week, where it won the Fipresci Prize. Six years later, he won the same section with Mimosas , his second feature film, also shot in North Africa. In 2019, with O que arde , a family drama set in rural Galicia, he won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section and received four Goya nominations , including Best Cinematography for Mauro Herce and Best New Actress for Benedicta Sánchez.

Sirat is a film that also exists in a limbo between the physical and the spiritual , between the transcendent and the mundane, between sweat and dust. Laxe and Herce's hands cause the image to transcend the screen in a synesthetic refraction in which the desert sand sticks to the throat and lungs. The director manages to bring out the soul even from inert objects , turning them into amulets capable of invoking all kinds of luck.

And it's in the first scene, in which a group of workers set up a wall of loudspeakers ready to blast a stream of sound toward the barren land, that the call comes. And the bass waves of electronic music, rhythmic and repetitive like a litany, gather the faithful, on the verge of ecstasy , in total communion with each other, with themselves, and with the earth. And at the same time, completely detached from themselves.

And it's on this border of antitheticals that this frontier film moves. A motley group of dispossessed people ( Stefania Gadda, Jade Oukid, Richard Bellamy, Tonin Janvier) leads this pilgrimage into the unknown, across rivers, ravines, and a country of poverty, with the army on their heels. And the desert , at its widest, relentless, like the ultimate test.

Father and son, who are presumed to have been living a completely normal life before the girl's disappearance, now rely on a group of deserters from the system who, like in a caravan western , seek their El Dorado at the largest rave ever organized . All of them demonstrate that emotional wounds eventually have a physical counterpart, whether tattoos, scarifications, or literal wounds. After their initial mistrust, father and son begin to integrate into the nomadic tribe that welcomes them, with whom they must learn to share, to live with less, and with whom they will eventually become part of this rite of passage. Because one of the characters explains to the father that the rave is not simply recreational, that drugs and vibrations allow us to reach a state of consciousness beyond the human eye . Laxe's masterful way of bringing this spiritual disquisition down to earth is in the most violent way.

In this bridge of antitheticals, Sirat balances between contemplation and horror. Because only when you have nothing to lose do you reach the stage of total autonomy, a journey open to all the possibilities of the world. And the film itself moves between pure auteur cinema and a stripped-down Mad Max . Laxe can establish itself at a festival that, for the moment, is struggling to reach the level of critical acclaim and impact of recent years. With Lynne Ramsay, the Dardennes, Kelly Reichardt, Julia Ducounau, Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, and Richard Linklater among the main attractions.

Sirat, which will be released in theaters on June 6, is the first of two Spanish films competing for the Palme d'Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The other is Romería , by Carla Simón, which premieres at the festival after winning the Berlinale's Golden Bear with Alcarrás. Guillermo García López is participating in Critics' Week with Ciudad sin sueño.