The glorious and forbidding Moroccan desert provides the backdrop for this extraordinary psychological journey from Oliver Laxe (FIRE WILL COME), a Galician filmmaker of startling ambition. Sergi López plays middle-aged Luis, whose worry over the disappearance of his daughter Mar has brought him, along with his young son, to Morocco. He believes she has fallen in with a group of nomadic thrill-seekers who are in pursuit of the next big rave in the desert. Tagging along with them in a makeshift caravan in the hopes he will find Mar, Luis is pushed toward emotional and physical extremes that extend far past his everyday comprehension. Even beyond the pulsing techno soundtrack and the majestic desolation of the landscape, SIRÂT (the title referring to the Islamic term for the razor-thin bridge between heaven and hell) creates a sensory experience of audacity and shock that touches the sublime. Joint winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“The movie begins in exhilaration and concludes in despair, and what unfolds in between is an experience of singularly turbulent and transfixing power; for sheer visceral excitement and sustained emotional force, I haven’t encountered its equal this year. It’s an extraordinarily propulsive piece of filmmaking, and every moment of it is suffused with feeling…. I left it unsteady but invigorated, and grateful anew for the ground beneath my feet.” —Justin Chang, New Yorker “Laxe’s preternaturally firm grip on the tone of escalating devastation…never falters. This thrilling directorial confidence, given his film’s elegant opacities and ambiguities, is a quality to marvel at…. SIRÂT is something new.” —Jessica Kiang, Variety “This is original, explosive (literally — you’ll see!) and ovation-worthy, cinema.” —Kevin Maher, The Times (UK) “[Oliver Laxe’s] grandest, most adventurous work yet…. There’s a delicious touch of Paul Schrader’s HARDCORE…but SIRÂT is more in the lineage of William Friedkin’s SORCERER, even MADMAX: a story about a ragtag group attempting to move some monstrous vehicles over a landscape so unforgiving it might actually be hell.” —Rory O’Connor, Film Stage
