Oliver Laxe’s Sirat is that rarest of things, a film that operates simultaneously on the senses and the soul. A father and his young son travel to a desert rave in southern Morocco searching for a missing daughter, and what begins as an offbeat road movie gradually, inexorably, transmutes into something far more primal and devastating.
Comparisons to Friedkin’s Sorcerer are not idle. Like that 1977 masterpiece, Sirat understands that the most terrifying journeys are the ones where the landscape itself becomes antagonist, where every mile forward strips another layer of civilisation from its characters. Both films grasp that desperate people, bound together by circumstance rather than choice, will reveal their truest selves when the world turns hostile. And both films were made by directors willing to put their crews through genuine physical hardship to capture something authentic on film, Laxe shot on Super 16mm in punishing Saharan conditions, and it shows in every sun-scorched, sand-blasted frame.
But what elevates Sirat into its own singular orbit is Kangding Ray’s extraordinary electronic score. The pulsing techno that opens the film establishes a heartbeat that never truly stops, even in the quietest passages. As the narrative darkens, Ray’s compositions shift from euphoric to funereal, the bass becoming less a rhythm and more a death rattle. It is one of the great film scores of recent years, physical, overwhelming, and utterly inseparable from the images it accompanies.
This is proper cinema. See it loud.
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