Sirat (2025): Life Ecstatic & Harrowing

By Len Weiler

Sirat (or As-Sirat) is, according to Islam, the bridge which, on the Day of Resurrection, the soul of every person must pass over in order to enter Paradise (“Jannah”). The Sirat - said to be thinner than a strand of hair and as sharp as the sharpest sword - traverses the hellfire of purgatory, the heat of which causes many to fall. The righteous will cross without difficulty; the daunting challenge is for the rest of us. 

Sirat is also the title of the fourth feature by Spanish director Oliver Laxe. The movie is not about Islam or any particular faith nor a parable about righteousness or its opposite.   But it is about a journey, ultimately a treacherous one. And about family, mortality, and much more. By the time the credits started to roll, the title of the movie seemed quite apt to me - in fact, just about perfect. 

It was nominated for two Oscars, including Best International Film. While Sirat did not win that category, I would not have been unhappy if it had: it was/is the most unusual and deeply gripping of the five nominated films - awesomely beautiful, thrillingly dramatic, startling and more than a little unsettling –  an unforgettable experience.  Its other Oscar nomination was for Best Sound, also totally justified. The sound mixing as well as the film’s soundtrack contrinuted greatly to the gripping tension of the dramatic scenes and carried me away during the scenes featuring electronic dance music (EDM).

The movie takes place in Morocco, where hundreds of devotees have gathered in a remote location deep in the desert for a rave - a mixed crowd of mostly European, countercultural men and women, seemingly transported from the late 1960s to the current day - willing to travel far away from the confining rules and expectations of Western civilization in order to gather with like-minded humans, seeking a kind of ecstasy attained via dancing. The pulsing EDM, played ultra-loud, produces a trancelike experience for the dancers, spiritual in a deeply primitive way - which seems to be the draw.  

Watching the throng of dancing ravers somehow reminded me of the euphoric, celebratory crowd dancing to a thumping disco beat at the outset of Sorrentino’s awesome film The Great Beauty (2013) – but at Sirat’s rave it’s not a social, party-like atmosphere so much as a meditative, beatific one.

The movie’s narrative begins with a father – Luis (Sergi López), a burly, middle aged Spanish man - accompanied by Esteban - his roughly eleven-year-old, son. Luis has come to this remote place searching for his adult daughter, who has recently gone missing. One of her friends thought she might be attending this rave in the desert. Luis and Esteban are fish out of water here - but they are determined.  Holding a battered photograph of the missing daughter, they wander through the crowd asking if anyone has seen her or knows her. They eventually make the acquaintance a group of five ravers, Josh, Tonin, Bogui, Stef (Stefania) and Jade who, like everyone else Luis and Esteban have met, say they do not know or recognize the girl in the photo. But these folks, at least, are sympathetic; they suggest that she may be headed for another rave which is supposed to take place next week near the Southern border of the country.

Out of the blue, a convoy of Moroccan troops arrives on the scene announcing that a major military conflict has broken out. Everyone must leave immediately. The disappointed crowd packs up and heads for the exit. In a long, dusty caravan of motley vehicles, Luis and Estaban find themselves just behind their new acquaintances, and when those guys suddenly veer off the main exit road onto an unused alternate path, Luis makes the decision to follow.  A few minutes along this new road, the ravers stop and admonish Luis to turn back – the route they will be following is long, rough and very difficult. While they are in rugged military style vehicles, Luis’s beat up old mini-van is completely unsuited for the dangerous terrain. Luis decides to continue regardless. I have no alternative, he says. 

Thus begins a journey both physical and metaphorical, exhilarating and devastating, gorgeous and horrifying, sweet and sobering. It’s a road trip across an unforgiving landscape on crude, unmarked, unpaved rutted tracks. Traveling across the arid, yet starkly beautiful no-man’s-land, they face howling, desert sandstorms and, paradoxically, a perilous, unbridged river crossing. At one point, fearing they may be in or near an active war zone, the group opts for an alternative route across the mountains, which proves even more perilous. The roads are rocky, impossibly narrow and steep - with sheer cliffs above and below. With no prospect of help in the event of a breakdown or other catastrophe, the traverse is both thrilling and nerve-racking, carrying strong echoes of the knife-edge mountain crossing in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic The Wages of Fear (1953).

Danger and crises serve to bring people together. And in Sirat, we have two disparate groups compelled by circumstance to become one: Luis and young Estebon on the one hand and the five ravers on the other. As they get to know one another, we get to know them too – as individuals rather than as archetypes.  

The folks I’ve called the ravers, become distinct individuals: Josh, Tonin, Bigui, Stef (Stefania) and Jade.  Their lives have not been easy – you can read this in their faces. And in their bodies: Bigui is missing his right forearm, Tonin has a makeshift prosthesis for a missing lower leg, one of the women walks with a limp – scars of some of life’s hardships and maybe some bad choices – although there is no suggestion of regret, no bitterness. They are generous, kind and caring toward one another.  It’s a close-knit all-for-one-and-one-for all communal life. During a quiet moment, Esteban - whose mother is deceased and his sister missing - asks one of the men (Bigui, I think) whether he sometimes thinks about his family or misses them … and Bigui responds, "I prefer this family." Over time, Luis and Estebon seem a part of this makeshift family as well. 

There is a sweetness to these developing relationships taking place, as they do, amid an increasingly precarious journey. And light, even humorous moments as well, such as one evening when Tonin transforms his scarred knee (absent the prosthetic lower leg) into a quite believable puppet and puts on a very funny puppet show.

These scenes are a respite from the growing anxiety of the journey, any emotional security you might feel in the camaraderie and laughter would be misplaced. Bad things CAN happen to good people. The natural environment is heartless. Fate plays no favorites. The possibility of injury or death, always a companion to physical risk, is ubiquitous; there's a sense of dread to the story. Despite our growing attachment, not everyone will survive. 

Which is a reason Sirat may not be for everybody. Yet, the shocking final scenes help to make the movie feel so raw and so real, and so riveting.  So intellectually and emotionally provocative. So  recommendable. 

“An experience of transfixing power; for sheer visceral excitement and sustained emotional force, I haven’t encountered its equal this year." – The New Yorker

    “Original, explosive, and ovation-worthy cinema.” – The Times

    “A wild, apocalyptic epic.” – Screen Rant

    “So intense you’ll want to scarper, but so riveting you can’t leave. ... If only all movies took swings this bold.” - Empire 

    *  *  *

1 hour 54 minutes

Grade: A 

Scheduled for release March 24 to rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV and other VOD platforms; Available free with subscription to Hulu beginning April 6, 2026