'Sirât': The desert journey has an end

Since his debut fifteen years ago with Todos Ustedes Son Capitáns (You Are All Captains) , a film shot in Tangier, in which he appeared with the young students of a makeshift film school, Oliver Laxe has continued to search for his destiny, calmly and with what seems to be an unshakeable faith in himself. That first film premiered, to international critical acclaim, at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, and the following ones were presented in various sections of the festival – Mimosas (2016), also shot in Morocco, in Critics' Week, and Lo que arde (2019) in Un Certain Regard (all available on Filmin) – climbing positions to the sacrosanct Official Selection, where it just took home the Jury Prize.

In Sirât , Sergi López is a family man searching for his daughter, presumed missing, and follows in the footsteps of a group of authentic anti-establishment punks who organize raves in the middle of the desert. It's not hard to imagine this band of punks as a reflection of Laxe's own band, which resides in a remote Galician village and experiences each new film as a true adventure on the fringes of the establishment. "Yes, we see ourselves a bit like a rock band: Oli has an idea, and then the musicians arrive with our instruments," says screenwriter Santiago Fillol, who joined the band with Mimosas . "That's when we began to construct a script from images, and then we finished constructing it during filming, which is how we've continued to do with our other films."

“Although Oliver and I met during my first year as a professor at Pompeu Fabra University. He was one of the students, we were both huge fans of Joaquim Jordà, and we spent a lot of time at his house on Carrer de la Cera,” he recalls. The rest of the band is made up of director of photography Mauro Herce, who has filmed the Moroccan desert like no one else; sound engineer Amanda Villavieja—sound is particularly important in Sîrat , where the focus is on the bass, on music that you feel in your body—and assistant director Luis Bértolo. “When we all play together, I feel a very special resonance that's unlike anything else,” says Fillol.

⁄ The film moves from the outer to the inner journey; those moments of connection that occur in the hardest moments

The first part of the film, in which Sergi López, accompanied by his young son and his dog, follows this procession of trucks that seem to have come straight out of Mad Max , is pure adventure cinema, as authentic as it is visually dazzling. “ Lawrence of Arabia was a film that was already very much in our minds when we shot Mimosas . These are films that you carry inside, that leave you feeling emotional. In this world where tourism has swallowed everything, and where there are no longer any places where you can discover an otherness that shakes your budget, we wanted to recover the experience of the transformative journey. Why make a film? To avoid being the same filmmaker you were before making it.”

In the final third of the film, without wishing to spoil anything, Sergi López's character undergoes a transformation, which leads him to enter a realm that Fillol describes as mystical. "At that moment, the film moves from an external to an internal journey. Sergi López's character begins to ask himself: What does life want from me? These moments of the most transcendental connection often occur in the most difficult moments."

Sirât is a journey film, a film that presents viewing as an entire experience. “We don't want the cinema to be simply a place where you go to consume a story. I like to think of moviegoers as a piano that plays four or five notes, and suddenly, when they go to the theater, they encounter a powerful experience that reminds them they have fifteen or twenty-three notes. I hope they leave the theater with more chords. That's what transformative experiences are like. Maybe that's our job as filmmakers, and we take it very seriously.”

⁄ Sound is paramount in 'Sîrat', where the bass is worshipped, the music that is felt in the body

Music, in any case, goes beyond metaphors. It's paramount in Sirât . To ensure that thunderous techno-trance, Laxe sought out Kangding Ray, a Berlin-based musician. “Oliver had been signing him up for a while. It was an amazing encounter. Dance culture is very important in Sirât . At the beginning of the film, we were very fascinated by Nietzsche, who, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra , says something like 'I couldn't believe in a God who doesn't know how to dance.' It's that energy. Music, the party, is a place where the Dionysian commune. If you ask people, from their twenties to their sixties, where they've created the most powerful bonds in their lives, they'll probably tell you at the end of a night of partying. There's a very powerful spiritual connection that doesn't occur in other areas of life. I think it's interesting to think about this: how that kind of excess that is the party produces something constitutive, that forges something like an alternative family.” We recommend experiencing the experience in a venue with the best acoustic conditions, such as Phenomena in Barcelona. Pump Up the Volume .

'Sirât' Directed by: Oliver Laxe. Written by: Oliver Laxe and Santiago Fillol. Starring: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Jade Oukid, Tonin Janvier, Richard Bellamy, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson. Theatrical release : June 6. Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival