Sirât, Oliver Laxe’s mystical odyssey in the desert

Characterized by sparse dialogue and revealing silences, with a particular focus on light, gestures, and stillness, Oliver Laxe remains true to his contemplative and spiritual approach in Sirât as he pursues his quest for an intense, slow-paced, and lived-in form of cinema, which explores the connection between people and nature, soul-searching, and traditions.

Inspired by the Sirāt Bridge, which in Islamic tradition separates hell from heaven where the soul is confronted with its true nature, the film tells the story of Luis (Sergi López), a committed father who embarks on a journey with his son to search for his eldest daughter, Marina, after she disappears at a rave in Morocco. When the duo crosses paths with a group of misfits, their trip over the Atlas Mountains gradually becomes a coming-of-age odyssey.

The themes of physical wandering, borders, and introspection punctuate the work of Tarkovski’s heir, a fan of minimalist storytelling who captures landscapes, elements, and physical matter as wild, uncontrollable forces. For this particular feature film, which is both more political and radical than his previous pictures and is shot on location in Spain and Morocco, Oliver Laxe follows the path of a lonely character in internal exile, crossing both a literal and metaphorical desert.

This time, he combines his stripped-back, gritty, and symbolic narrative device—bathed in a quasi-biblical light—with the granular texture of 16mm film. This extends the sensory, mythical experience that he has favored ever since Vous êtes tous des capitaines (You All Are Captains) (2010), the documentary that revealed his radically humanistic art to the world of contemporary arthouse cinema.