Sirât (2025)

A winner of the 2025 Cannes Competition Jury Prize and Spain’s official Oscar entry, Sirāt is a gripping, visceral, and metaphysical thriller by Galician filmmaker and Festival favourite Oliver Laxe. Sergi López plays Luis, a man desperately searching for his missing daughter Mar throughout the harsh southern deserts of Morocco, along with his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their dog Pipa. At the film’s beginning — a pulsating open-air rave — the trio drifts through throngs of entranced and sweaty partygoers, handing out flyers with photos. As soldiers move in to shut down the festivities, father and son follow and ultimately join a motley bunch of roving ravers (memorably played by non-professionals) who set out in their van in search of the next party — and hopefully Mar — as hints of impending war multiply.

With swirling dust storms and solar flashes alighting the landscapes — stunningly enhanced by director of photography Mauro Herce’s exquisite Super 16mm and an award-winning, low end–heavy score by techno stalwart Kangding Ray — the expedition increasingly transforms into a sensorial experience that tests physical and psychological limits. Simultaneously explosive and introspective — a film in which spirituality and altered states of consciousness exist alongside raw, sober humanity — Sirāt, which means “path” in Arabic, explores how loss, grief, and violence can imbue life with intensity and clarity. While many have evoked Mad Max, Zabriskie Point, and The Wages of Fear as cinematic touchstones, the film emerges cult-ready from the singular vision of Laxe, known for his mystical sensibility in probing immaterial truths.