A father (Sergi López) and son (Bruno Núñez) are searching for their missing daughter/sister who was last understood to be taking part in a rave in Morocco. This pair, a paunchy fellow well into his middle-aged years and his pre-teen child, fit into this scene like a sore thumb. Wandering from group to group that gyrate and wave their arms in ecstasy, in thrall to their music and likely other substances, the pair carry around a photo of the missing young woman in hopes someone will have an answer or lead of some kind. When they cross paths with a small conclave of ravers, they catch wind that this group is headed to another gathering further into the desert, and despite the odds and a vehicle poorly equipped to handle the terrain, the pair follow them in hopes they might finally learn something about what happened to their lost family member.
A film that defies your expectations at each turn, Sirat may turn off impatient filmgoers with its initial stretch. The first twenty minutes are a fascinating bird’s-eye view of the kind of guerrilla carousing that makes up festivals like Burning Man or even less organized, almost instantaneous events within the EDM movement. Because so much time is spent with said pair, Luis and Esteban, ping-ponging between people who are barely paying attention to them, it feels a bit like a stress test for the viewer before the “actual” movie begins. But for the patient viewer willing to meet director Oliver Laxe and the cast on their own terms, they’ll be quickly rewarded (or punished) with one of the most desolate road trip films in recent memory.
Laxe is working in a couple of different modes with Sirat. The motley crew that Luis and Esteban take up with are made up of a group of non-actors pulled directly from The Free People Movement, giving the journey a realistic edge that might feel artificial in other hands. This is a quintet that looks as though they’ve made sojourns just like this before, and to my surprise, their performances are strong enough that they left me questioning if I was actually watching first-time actors. Additionally, I was greatly appreciative of how Laxe firmly embraces the found family aspects of this group. I realize such a thing is pretty trite, the idea of “family being the one you choose” having been run to death in films of all stripes and sizes, but each member of this small caravan carries real scars (both physical and emotional), and when a character talks about why he doesn’t miss his biological family, there’s a deeper truth that goes far beyond some studio-mandated note. That this somewhat rangy-looking crew could have easily also been played as untrustworthy – and Laxe even toys with that in short bursts – but instead provides nothing but kindness even to strangers like Luis and Esteban, it’s a subversion of expectations that is greatly appreciated.
The other area of note that Laxe has in mind is the subtextual one, in how he ties together the EDM/Rave movement with the same fervor of religious belief. This is made manifest specifically in how a broadcast of Muslims in huge masses praying towards Mecca, being guided by a giant speaker system, appears on a television in the midst of the cast’s journey, marking a direct comparison to everything we’ve seen in the film’s opening. In a way, I’m reminded of Gaspar Noé’s Climax, in how he tied together the body contortions of dance to body horror. Sirat contains a similar sort of autopsy of its popular subject of interest, but wrapped up in a much better film.
And I haven’t even touched on the speculative elements that ride around in the background of Sirat, turning its sparse atmosphere into one approaching the biblical, or the pulsing score that is used effortlessly to both further the aforementioned themes and put the viewer on a specific kind of knife’s edge. Instead, I’ll just say it’s a thriller in the truest sense, and there were moments that indeed left my jaw hanging open the further we descended into this arid wasteland.