A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.
Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt is a film that moves with the slow, drifting quality of a dream. It begins with a sense of hypnotic calm, as if the story is floating on a current of sound and dust. Then, without warning, it plunges into emotional turmoil. The film is not driven by plot. It is driven by sensation, by the feeling of being lost in a world that is falling apart. It is a work that lingers not because of what happens, but because of how it feels.
The story follows Luis, a father searching for his missing daughter Mar, and his young son Esteban. They travel through the mountains and deserts of southern Morocco, moving from rave to rave in the hope of finding someone who has seen her. The pair weave through crowds of dancers, offering her photograph to strangers. Their hope is fragile, but they continue forward because stopping would mean accepting the worst.
The film opens with a long rave sequence that stretches on for what feels like an eternity. The music pounds. Dust rises in waves. Bodies move in a trance. Time seems to dissolve. Laxe refuses to rush. He wants the audience to feel the pull of the rhythm, the way the rave becomes a world of its own. For some viewers, this will be intoxicating. For others, it will be overwhelming. The film does not try to please either group. It simply immerses you in the experience.
The trance is broken when soldiers arrive to shut down the party. The ravers scatter. Rumours of a global conflict spread through the crowd. The world outside the rave seems to be collapsing, but the ravers treat the news with a strange indifference. Their focus remains on the next gathering, the next burst of music, the next moment of escape. This contrast between global crisis and personal obsession becomes one of the film’s central tensions.
Luis and Esteban eventually join a small group of travellers who are heading toward another rave deeper in the desert. Many of them carry visible injuries or physical differences. They seem to have formed a community built on shared vulnerability. At first they want nothing to do with Luis, but his persistence earns him a place in their small convoy. Together they cross a vast and unforgiving landscape.
Laxe refuses to provide backstory. We never learn why Mar left home, or what her life was like before she disappeared. We never learn much about the ravers themselves. The characters arrive on screen without explanation, and the film leaves their histories untouched. This creates a sense of emotional distance. We recognise these people, but we never fully understand them. It is a deliberate choice that mirrors Luis’s own confusion. He is surrounded by others, yet he remains isolated.
The middle section of the film becomes a slow desert road movie. The group travels in battered vans across endless stretches of sand. The cinematography is breathtaking. The desert dwarfs the characters. They become tiny figures swallowed by heat and wind. Sandstorms erase their tracks. Supplies run low. Yet a fragile sense of community begins to form, especially between Esteban and the ravers, who treat him with a rough but genuine tenderness.
The score pulses quietly beneath the images. It is a low, mournful electronic rhythm that hints at the tragedies waiting ahead. When those tragedies arrive, they strike with shocking force. About halfway through the film, just when it seems to be drifting toward hope, Laxe delivers a devastating twist. It is the first of several. The film becomes increasingly painful and unpredictable. The calm of the early scenes gives way to chaos.
The final act descends into emotional devastation. The film becomes jagged, surreal, and deeply unsettling. The title refers to a narrow bridge in Islamic belief that souls must cross on the Day of Judgment. In the final stretch, that metaphor becomes almost literal. The characters feel suspended between life and death, hope and despair, connection and isolation.
Despite the bleakness, Sirāt is not a hopeless film. Laxe finds moments of tenderness amid the devastation. A shared joke. A gesture of care. A fleeting sense of belonging. The film suggests that empathy, however fragile, is what makes survival possible. Laxe refuses to judge his characters, even when they behave recklessly or selfishly. Instead, he observes them with a calm and almost spiritual neutrality.
Sirāt is not narratively strong. Many scenes feel aimless. The emotional stakes can be unclear. Yet the film’s power lies in its atmosphere. It burrows into your senses rather than your intellect. You do not leave with answers. You leave with sensations. You leave with images burned into your long-term memory.
It is slow. It is meandering. It is hypnotic. Then it breaks apart. When it breaks, it breaks completely.
Laxe has created a film that is difficult, frustrating, and unforgettable. It lingers not because of what happens, but because of how it feels. Sirāt is a reminder that some stories are not meant to guide you. They are meant to leave you wandering long after the credits fade.
Sirāt is coming to Aotearoa NZ cinemas March 5, 2026.
Find your nearest screening here