SYNOPSIS: A entry in the Academy Awards context for Best International Feature Film, the arthouse missing daughter drama “Sirāt” is an audacious and harrowing story of fate and the thin line between life and death.
CAST: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Richard Bellamy, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid. Directed by Óliver Laxe.
REVIEW: A story of tension and torment, the road trip drama of “Sirāt” is a difficult, but hypnotising journey that will leave viewers willing to immerse themselves disoriented, while others may feel discontented by the film’s ending.
The story begins as father and son Luis (Sergi López) and Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) arrive at a rave in the mountains of southern Morocco in search of their missing daughter/sister Mar. Amid the pounding music and flashing lights, they circulate her photo in hopes someone will recognize her.
Their search leads them to a group of ravers who think Mar might be at another rave, one located deeper in the Sahara. The journey of hope turns into a surreal trip as war breaks out around them, making their quest a literal geopolitical minefield of potential disaster.
An allegory for the Sirāt bridge, the Islamic concept of a bridge over Hell, a passage between salvation and damnation, that every person must cross on Judgment Day to reach Paradise, “Sirāt” is an unusual movie.
Director Óliver Laxe, who so-wrote with Santiago Fillol, sets up a seven levels of hell scenario for Luis, Esteban and the ravers to navigate, placing existential crisis at every turn. Death is ever present, whether it’s from misadventure, the above-mentioned landmines, their own desperate choices or through exposure to the unforgiving desert landscape.
It is harrowing, unforgiving material that occasionally veers into the absurd. A dog falls ill after eating LSD-laced feces and, in a rare bit of comic relief, a one-legged man performs a puppet musical using his prosthetic as a guitar. These moments don’t exactly break the tension, but they do provide a respite from the film’s intensity.
Rich in allegory, “Sirāt” keeps the story loose, opting for an episodic, sensory experience embellished with unexpected twists that tie the various elements—survival story, road trip tale, missing person story—together. It’s propulsive, if uneven, filmmaking that requires patience as it defies easy categorization.
”Sirāt” covers a lot of ground, physically and metaphysically, but at its heart is driven by personal grief and a sense of familial responsibility.
