Final Rating: 4/5
Blu-ray Recommendation: Recommend
Ed. note: read our original review of Sirāt by Brodie Cotnam from Genre Gems 2025.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote this phrase originally, I’m not sure that he knew it would be co-opted as a somewhat-naïve mantra for solo travelers and globetrotting social media influencers alike. In their context it refers to a certain kind of freedom or escape from the conformity of everyday life that you will, eventually, return to.
For the characters in Sirāt, their version of escape means that they exist in a state of limbo one step away from society. What happens when you no longer have a place to call home? What happens when you put your life on pause to go on the road to find a missing family member? How do you react when the safety nets for your existence are gone? What happens when your reason for existing is ripped away from you?
These are some of the hefty questions that director Óliver Laxe tackles in Sirāt, an award-winning film at last year’s Cannes Film Festival that went on to receive worldwide attention. The film was acquired by Neon for North American distribution, which includes their recent physical release on Blu-ray.
The film follows two different groups of people that have come together on the site of an outdoor rave in Morocco. First is a group of nomadic ravers, all transplanted from different parts of Europe, who form a kind of found family that travel together and help to put on these off-the-grid dance parties.
The second is a father, Luis, and his son, Esteban, who are looking for his daughter. She has been missing for five months and was involved in rave culture in this part of the world. While Luis has had no success in finding her, the group of ravers tell him of another rave happening further to the south where his daughter may have been travelling to.
The military rolls into the rave to shut it down, as an armed conflict has broken out in the country. Rather than be escorted for safe passage back to Europe, the ravers escape the evacuation to race south for the next party. Luis and Esteban, seeing this, instinctively follow their convoy clinging to the hope of being reunited with their estranged family member.
After some uneasy tensions, the two groups form more of a bond on the road across the desert. As they hear more on the radio of the armed conflict escalating into a dangerous global conflict, the group decides to travel via the mountains to avoid being found by the military. The travel conditions turn treacherous, increasingly tense, and eventually devastating. All of the wanderers, in different ways, have become lost.
Sirāt is a pretty astounding technical film achievement, which is beautifully conveyed on Neon’s physical release. The vast desert vistas of Morocco during the “road trip” aspects of the film are jaw-dropping. During his press run for the film, Laxe cited influences from similarly stunning films like Days Of Heaven, Two-Lane Blacktop, and Vanishing Point, and it’s also easy to feel the impact of Mad Max: Fury Road in many of these sequences. When the tensions amp up, it also finds fellowship in frayed-nerve classics like The Wages Of Fear, Sorcerer, and Apocalypse Now.
Where Sirāt finds its own lane is in its musical score, produced by electronic musician Kangding Ray (the pseudonym of David Letellier), and how it contributes to the overall sound design of the film. Letellier’s techno beats bely the more current EDM templates of euphoric highs and massive bass drops, instead opting for deep grooves and primal bass kicks. They sound like they come from the roots of the earth, from the fiber of existence.
As the film progresses, the musical score gradually shifts in a more ambient and trance-like direction. It blends with the sounds of the convoy’s vehicles, the clanging of metal, the vibrations of speakers in disrepair, the sand and debris under their tires. It’s no surprise that the filmmakers found themselves nominated in the Best Sound category at the most recent Academy Awards, a rare feat for a non-English language film. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack option on this release will be a treat for those with the technology to experience it.
The film presents incredibly well on Neon’s Blu-ray, which does also include some short supplemental featurettes to provide small glimpses into the production. Two of these supplements focus on director Laxe’s filming process and the sound and musical team’s artistry in making Sirāt sound and feel the way it does.
The rest of the featurettes focus on its cast. Interestingly, there are only two professional actors (Sergi López as Luis and young Bruno Núñez Arjona as Esteban) in the main cast; the group of ravers are all non-actors cast for their involvement with the rave culture. The featurettes show the interesting approaches the non-actors took in getting into their characters and becoming an “invisible family” (as one supplement is aptly titled).
Physical releases for modern films have a tendency to skimp out on supplemental features, perhaps including more of them in a larger “collector’s edition” to be released in the future. While Neon could certainly have included more material here (Sirāt is definitely the kind of film that warrants deep dives and larger thematic conversations), what is included gives an interesting sense of the unique aspects of this production.
While all four of Óliver Laxe’s films have featured through the European festival circuit, Sirāt is the first to find both a wider global audience and full North American distribution. The film has (and will continue to) divide some viewers in its more tense and shocking moments, but this physical release showcases it beautifully.
Thank you Allied Vaughn and Movie Zyng for the screener.
Buy your copy of Sirāt here: https://moviezyng.com/ap1tbt
