Film Review: SIRÂT (2025): Oliver Laxe’s Probing Drama Packs a Powerful Punch with its Riveting Themes
Sirât Review
Sirât (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Oliver Laxe, written by Santiago Fillol and Oliver Laxe and starring Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Herderson, Richard ‘Bigui’ Bellamy, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, and Ahmed Abbou.
Sirât is a disturbing thriller from filmmaker Oliver Laxe. It is crafted like an action picture that builds so much unrelenting tension in its early scenes that when it reveals its major plot developments, they are completely unexpected and, therefore, even more disturbing than one could have ever imagined. Sirât tells a tale of a dad named Luis (Sergi López) who is traveling through south Morocco with his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their dog, Pipa. Luis is looking for his missing daughter and is checking out local raves to see if he can locate her. Luis enlists help from some party goers whose motives we’re not certain of from the film’s outset. This movie creates its suspense in such a way that the style of the movie is integrated with genuine substance, making the end result that much more powerful to behold.
Tonin (Tonin Janvier), one of the people from a rave, has one leg and puts on a puppet show in the latter half of the film as a coping mechanism to deal with what is going on here. Alongside the charismatic Tonin are four other party-goers, including the intriguing Jade (Jade Oukid). This group of people tries to help Luis discover his daughter’s whereabouts. Developments regarding the daughter are minimal, if they even exist at all here. Instead, the movie focuses on the frightening consequences of the search for a truth that may not be worth discovering. The poor dog almost dies from eating feces containing LSD, but even though the dog gets by for a little while longer after that, its fate is almost inevitable.
A van goes off a cliff with a key character which sets the movie further into motion towards a volatile conclusion that literally explodes with fury. A central component employed by Laxe is the use of pulsating, throbbing music that sets our party-goers free in the middle of nowhere near the end as tragedy strikes yet again. It appears a war is surrounding them and spiraling out of control which is a situation that is juxtaposed against Luis’ search for the truth regarding his daughter. Luis ends up experiencing further loss which is devastating to behold.
One scene has Luis waking up after a sleep in a van after tragedy has struck. It almost feels like it was all a nightmare, but no. Things have certainly escalated into a hell-like state for Luis who experiences unimaginable tragedy over the course of the film.
Sergi López is nothing short of superb as the desperate father who hands out posters to try to find his daughter’s whereabouts under very heavy parallel circumstances. López creates a fragile man holding on to his life, praying to get it back on track, but unfortunately, tragedy looms in front of him in an even larger way than he could have ever imagined at the film’s start. Bruno Núñez Arjona expertly conveys the hopeful son who can only wish to find his sister as the pair searches for what feels like it’s a human “needle in a haystack of red tape” situation which makes the truth pretty much impossible to discover.
What makes Sirât so watchable is the intensity that Laxe brings to the story line. With excellent music and scenes of characters trying to liberate themselves through club music, Laxe shows desperate souls at the end of their ropes who are hoping for some kind of salvation which will most likely never arrive. Janvier and Oukid are compelling in their small, but pivotal, roles in the film and they are properly supported by fine performers all around, especially López whose performance will get under the viewer’s skin as we witness this older man devastated by the things going on around him, but still holding on for a miracle.
Sirât never offers any easy answers regarding the delicate questions at its helm. Instead, the movie rests on the premise that some things are better left unknown and that the preservation of life is of tremendous urgency under the circumstances the movie portrays. It’s not worth the risk of losing everything that makes life bearable to discover the whereabouts of just one person when so many other lives are at stake, especially when making any sort of headway in terms of a particular discovery is nearly impossible. Luis is a man of integrity who gets revelations which shatter his soul by the time the end credits roll.
If Sirât is a hard watch, and it most certainly is, the expertly crafted picture still maintains audience curiosity right from the opening moments all the way until the tragic and ambiguous ending. While we never get the definitive answers we’re looking for, we get some revelations about the quest for the truth and its unnerving consequences which could change the direction our future lives take forever. This is a very well made picture that will stay in one’s mind days after seeing it.
Rating: 8/10
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