Sirât

Bluesky

French-born Spanish director Oliver Laxe has a habit of shooting films in rough and exotic conditions. His first feature You Are All the Captains was made in Tangier in 2010 while his second in 2016 Mimosas was filmed in the Atlas Mountains.

For Sirât he has returned to Morocco and the Saghro desert where Sergi López's Luis accompanied by his son (Brúno Nuñex) is searching for his missing daughter. The desert vistas and the searing heat make it seem as if it is the end of the world. The atmosphere is near apocalyptic as a group of ravers journey across the terrain in search of one last party.

The film looks amazing, but it sounds even more incredible - the opening scenes revolve around an illegal outdoor happening as people dance to blasts of techno coming from an array of al fresco speakers (the music is composed by Kangding Ray while the sound design has been signed by David Letellier) while the ambient noises of the desert create their own score.

Father and son hand out leaflets about the daughter who left home five months previously and hasn’t been seen since. Eventually they become embroiled with a group in two vans - Stef (Stefania Gadda), Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Jade (Jade Oukid) and Bigui (Richard Bellamy) - who believe she may have been abducted and taken to the next rave.

They join forces and head off in convoy across hazardous mountain tracks with the odd sandstorm thrown in for good measure. They are strange travelling companions but necessity binds them together. There is a spiritual element to the quest - indeed, the title Sirât, in Arabic, means a narrow bridge linking heaven and hell.

Laxe exerts a hypnotic grip over the proceedings, using a mix of professional and amateur actors whose weathered faces and stark physiques give testimony to alternative lives spent mainly outdoors and on the move.

It has a pervading sense of Mad Max: Fury Road about it or even Henri-George Clouzot’s The Wages Of Fear but with a poetry and rigour all of its own which exerts an arresting and haunting grip.

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