Director: Oliver Laxe
Writers: Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe
Stars: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda
Synopsis: A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.
In the world of Mad Max, created in 1979 by George Miller, the Wastelands are a form of purgatory. This post-apocalyptic hellscape catches everyone and places them in a cycle of violence, suffering, and potential redemption. The Wastelands become a place where people like Max, Furiosa, or Immortan Joe confront their guilt, trauma, and the chance for change. Lost souls roam through the desert, ending in either damnation or salvation, wherever their respective journeys lead them. As the endless, barren desert is bolstered in fire, fury, and blood, it all feels like a loop, purgatory’s waiting, and the cyclical penance. For his latest work, Sirat (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), Oliver Laxe takes this symbolic representation of the wasteland and barren desert, without excessive violence or Ozploitation elements.
The Spanish-French filmmaker turns it into something so outlandish, adventurous, and remarkably moving that you are surprisingly fascinated by everything he offers. Mad Max meets Zabriskie Point, as many have described it, Laxe puts us, and the characters, through the ringer, on a proverbial odyssey where we walk the bridge between life, hope, and death. It swings constantly and could lead to damnation in one misstep. It is a daunting and expressive journey that confounds and inspires, with Laxe making some of the boldest and adventurous moves in his time as a filmmaker that ultimately grip you in a quiet but unrelenting emotional hold.
Sirat begins with some workmen setting up giant speakers and sound equipment on a rock cliff in the Moroccan desert for what appears to be a rave party. Kangding Ray’s magnificent score begins to pulse through the barren land. The basslines vibrate through the sand like a spell, waking both the living and the dead. A post-apocalyptic music festival in the vein of Coachella and Burning Man is constructed in minutes. Within the partygoers and drug-takers, there’s Luis (Sergi López) and his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez), joined by their terrier, Pippa. Luis is out there searching for his daughter, who has been missing for five months, and rumor has it that she’s at the rave party.
He shares photos of her with the partygoers, hoping somebody knows about his daughter’s whereabouts. In a place covered with people dancing their hearts out, or what’s left of it, Luis and Esteban are outsiders, suffering the disappearance of a loved one and holding out for fate to reunite them again. Luckily, the two meet a ragtag group of ravers, who look like they have been through hell and back, and are happy to share that another party is scheduled soon on the other side of the desert. The party is terminated by a soldier announcing that a state of emergency has been declared. Everybody packs quickly, regrouping with eerie calm to head elsewhere.
War has broken out and reached their location, but everyone seems to have been prepared for it; you get the feeling that they all have gone through similar perils, which leads them to be mentally organized for what comes next, even if they don’t know where to head out to. Luis makes a quick decision: follow the ravers to the other location. This leads them towards a perilous venture through the Sahara with dangers lurking around every corner, some of which feel inspired by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece, Wages of Fear—the dangers lie not only in the road ahead but also in their fractured mental states and growing desperation.
Laxe is no Clouzot, nor reaching the level of William Friedkin, who made an equally excellent remake of Wages of Fear in Sorcerer. Hence, the mastery of holding an audience captive through tension, introspection, and existentialism is not here. However, he manages to completely control the various tones displayed in Sirat with tremendous confidence. Laxe implements the Mad Max element of a wasteland as a purgatory with dashes of mysticism, the title coming from the separation of paradise and hell. But there are also similarities with Fury Road, without the spectacle and popcorn entertainment, yet with the same amount of tension and shocking moments, some of which do leave you speechless and without room to breathe.
The characters head towards salvation, even if everything in their way impedes them from doing so. They wander through sun-flared lands for what seems like eternity. “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” A character replies, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” Time does not move in the world of Sirat; things may change, incidents tend to occur, but everything remains still. The only thing moving is the people dancing in the face of death and near reach of deliverance. Even though it is set in a location where there isn’t much to it, Laxe focuses on the story’s setting, detailing every inch of the locations, from the grains of sand and dust covering the screen to the vehicles the characters travel in.
Sirat is built from this specificity, constructing his parable about release in a world of decay from the outside in. Oliver Laxe crafts more than a dystopian odyssey–he constructs a spiritual trial by fire, where nothing is guaranteed and grace must be fought for through exhaustion, despair, and communion. The film’s power lies in its atmosphere and willingness to sit with stillness and ambiguity. Laxe doesn’t offer salvation, only the possibility of it. The bridge of Sirat is not one you cross once, but repeatedly in search of hope. It’s sun-scorched, soul-searching, and stress-inducing, but ultimately unforgettable and admirable–a true standout in the Cannes selection and modern Spanish cinema.
