Watch this film barefoot in the movie theatre. The vibrations of the speakers, particularly the subwoofers, should enter your body via your lower limbs, just as your eyes and ears absorb the remaining information. Sirat is structured like a drug-induced trance, leaving viewers bewitched and confounded, experiencing a blend of pleasure and horror.
The story begins as avuncular Spaniard Luis (Sergi Lopez), his child son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) and their dog Pipa arrive by car in a large rave bang in the middle of the scorching Moroccan desert. The party-goers are mostly European men and women in the 20s, 30s and 40s and perhaps 50s, some tattooed, with fake mohawks and extended ear piercings. They dance to heavy techno music coming from the large speakers circling them, temporarily laid on the golden sands of the Sahara. It is daytime, but the shiny happy people remain undaunted by the heat. After all, they have the class A drugs to keep them going.
Luis hands out leaflets with the picture of his daughter Mar, who has been missing for five months. Nobody recognises her. Suddenly, military vehicles approach and bust the party. Angry revellers confront them to no avail. Two vehicles do a runner, and a desperate Luis follows them, determined to stay in the desert and find his missing daughter whatever the cost. The flamboyant motley crew reluctantly accept Luis and his son into their group. The gang consists of French0- and Spanish-speaking male and females, who alternate between the two languages as required, and occasionally risk a word or two in Arabic (as they come across some useful locals).
One-armed Bigui is the most talkative and charismatic of all. One-legged Tonin (Tonin Janvier) brings some good humour and joy into the proceedings, particularly as he delivers an otherworldly ventriloquist performance, turning his stumped limb into a guitar-playing ET (the scene is as creepy and absurd as it sounds, rivalling only David Gluck’s singing anus in John Waters’s 1972 classic Pink Flamingos). Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson) is goofy and clueless, more concerned with his latest trip on psychedelics. The females Jade (Jade Oukid) and Stef (Stefania Gadda) are the sensible and sensitive ones, and the first to embrace their father-son duo.
Despite their differences, Luis and and Esteban eventually bond with the colourful strangers. And despite all the chemicals, a sense of compassion and solidarity still prevails. Everyone comes to Pipa’s rescue after she ingests LSD-laced poo. The pooch throws a very convincing fit, which will either A) infuriate animals lovers concerned for the wellbeing of the canine actor; or B) earn Pipa the Palme Dog (last year it went to the Jack Russell in Hu Guan’s Black Dog). Eventually Luis begins to engage with the strange sounds (he should not listen to the music but simply dance to it instead, his new friends reliably inform the middle-aged man).
These people are European outcasts desperately searching for redemption. They all lost something: an arm, a leg, a daughter or a sister. They represent a failed continental project. Lost souls seeking cheap and capricious thrills, and solace in the neighbouring sun. These people have no colonialist vision and ambitions. They are frail and futile. They pose a threat to nobody else but themselves. Their fates see-saw between near-tragedies and tragedies as they get lost deeper into the desert, and their mortality becomes increasingly evident. They must learn some life lessons the hard way, often to a disturbing outcome.
On his fourth feature film, 43-year-old Franco-Spanish director Oliver Laxe creates a spectacular ode to life, in all of its magnificent intensity and frailty. Sirat is an extremely powerful film, often unpredictable and explosive. A multisensory experience: a movie you can see, listen and feel with clarity and vigour.
This isn’t the first time Laxe shoots in Morocco: he did so in his debut feature You All Are Captains (2010), as well as in 2017’s Mimosas (taking viewers on a spiritual journey into the heart of the Arab nation).
Sirat premiered in the Official Competition of the 78th Festival de Cannes, when this piece was originally written. Also showing a Tiff Romania, Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo. San Sebastian, the BFI London Film Festival, the Tallinn Black Nights, and the Red Sea.
