Óliver Laxe presents an odyssey that moves along the boundary between collective trance and personal disintegration. Halfway between apocalypse and fable, the film throws us into the heart of the Moroccan desert, where an ephemeral community of young ravers becomes the backdrop for a far more intimate quest: that of a father and son who travel through dust and despair in search of a missing daughter and sister. Laxe invites us not so much to a narrative as to an experience, where bonds, survival, and faith are tested under an unrelenting sun and to the rhythm of hypnotic electronic music.

From its outset, Sirât positions itself as a film that defies easy classification. It is not exactly a family drama, nor a political film, nor a classic dystopia. It is all of those things and none at once. The plot, seemingly simple, becomes more complex as it unfolds—not so much through narrative twists but through an increasing sense of disorientation: the characters delve deeper into a hostile landscape, both physical and emotional, where social hierarchies and national identities lose their meaning.

Luis, the father, appears as a displaced figure—out of place in the pagan ritual of the rave. He neither dances nor consumes; he only searches. And in that search, he drags his son along, too young to fully grasp what is at stake. Mar’s disappearance becomes more than an open wound; it turns into a symbol: the impossibility of reconnecting with loved ones, the generational fracture, the dissolution of paternal certainties. Yet the film does not dwell on character psychology. Laxe avoids heavy-handedness and instead proposes a cinema with a rough surface and uncertain depth.

After the eviction of the first camp—a tense sequence in which a world in geopolitical decay is barely hinted at through a crackling radio or an official document—a new group is formed: an improvised caravan of battered vehicles and exhausted bodies. Here, the notion of collectivity is reinforced: to move forward in the desert, no one can go alone. Cooperation becomes a rule—not out of moral virtue but immediate necessity. And this fragile solidarity, full of awkward silences and wary glances, becomes the true driving force of the film.

At times, Sirât falls into certain repetitions. Danger looms in similar forms; gestures of violence or tenderness feel recycled from earlier moments. This may diminish the emotional impact of scenes that, taken on their own, are powerful. But it also constructs a circular logic, where each stretch of the journey brings the characters back to the same symbolic place: exposure.

In its final stretch, the film embraces heartbreak. It does so without concessions, though at times it threatens to veer into gratuitousness. The progressive disappearance of characters recalls a cruel tale, and although the film does not pause to explain causes or consequences, it makes clear that reaching the end comes at a cost. Without offering answers or redemption, Laxe poses a provocative hypothesis: perhaps there is no return to what we once were. In its place remains the passage—that narrow bridge between the human and the inhuman, between love and abandonment. Sirât, a name taken from Islam to refer to the bridge separating hell from paradise, doesn’t tell us whether the characters succeed in crossing it. But it shows us how they face, with bodies and convictions, the possibility of doing so.