SIRÂT

Directed by: Oliver Laxe Starring: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Stefania Gadda Certificate: 15 Released: 27 February 2026Rating: 8/10

Galician director Oliver Laxe is shaping up to be modern cinema’s austere poet of mystical revelation. Mimosas (2016) was the kind of film that Sufi poets might have made if they had invented the western in the seventh century Morocco. Fire Will Come (2019) was an infernal hymn to the earth’s destructive breath. Now Sirāt is a  cinematic tone poem of wind and light – a staggering, transcendental road movie that feels like a pilgrimage to the end of the world.

Set against the scorched vistas of Saharan North Africa, the film follows a father (the dogged Sergi López) and his young son as they search for a missing daughter, apparently a convert to the crusty rave scene. But as they move deeper into the desert, the mission takes on the weight of an ancient myth. Laxe, working with cinematographer Mauro Herce, shoots the Sahara not as a wasteland, but as a living landscape of shifting sands and minefields.

The "Sirat" of the title refers to the razor-thin bridge over hell in Islamic eschatology, and the film exists in that exact state of precarity. There is a sense of encroaching spiritual collapse – an apocalyptic hum that resides in the silence between the characters. Most notably, Laxe tethers this transcendence to the ground with an infernal, percussive score by French electronic musician Kangding Ray. The soundtrack begins as a series of massive techno slaps – raw, industrial beats that mirror the illegal raves the characters inhabit – before gradually dematerialising into something more granular and ambient, as if the music itself is being eroded by the sandstorms.

Sirat is a demanding, and at times unbearable watch, built on long takes and a narrative that refuses to provide easy catharsis. But the white knuckle tension remains compelling - this is a film that demands to be seen in a theatre, and watched at maximum volume.