Directed by Oliver Laxe | Written by Laxe and Santiago Fillol | 115 min | ▲▲ | VOD
I try not to make a habit of quoting other film critics, but there’s something Mark Kermode, who has a podcast called Kermode and Mayo’s Take in the UK, said when describing Sirat, especially the last act, that I can’t get past. He said he found it “more absurd than absurdist.” I’d take that observation and apply it to the film as a whole.
Sirat‘s inclusion in the Best International Film category at the 2026 Oscars and its recognition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival is a bit of a mystery, as are the raves it received, but then this was maybe the most polarizing film of the 2026 awards season. I’m far on the other side of those garlands — I found Sirat occasionally compelling to look at, but overall weirdly performative and empty. The picture might be best described as a black comedy where the filmmakers forgot to add the laughs.
It starts with a father, Luis (Sergi López, who I recognized straight away from Pan’s Labyrinth, 20 years old this year but still burned into my memory) and young son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) looking for a missing daughter/sister at a rave in Morocco. She’s been gone for months, but they think she’ll be at this event.
She’s not, but Luis and Esteban connect with a small cadre of ravers — tattooed partiers who, leathery and weathered, look like Mad Max extras and barely have personalities to distinguish them. They insist there’s another rave further out in the desert that they plan to attend, maybe she’ll be there. We then get the suggestion of a geopolitical crisis and EU citizens are being told to leave by soldiers, but the father and son, accompanied by two buses driven by these other ravers, head out into the sands.
After that, the central plot note and character motivation of finding the daughter/sister blows away like dust. The vibe of the film turns fully dystopic and random, the only thing to do is journey through merciless wastes toward an uncertain, uncaring destination. I get the allegory of the desert as the purgatory of a godless life, but it’s not much of a thrill. The suggestion of spiritual succor in music is occasionally nodded to, then forgotten.
To credit the production design, Sirat evokes any number of heat and dust cinematic antecedents, from the suspense of The Wages of Fear to the existential goofiness of Gerry, underpinned by the modern culture of EDM and Burning Man. What it’s missing is a sense of real life stakes. It seems to be talking about chosen family and community in the face of a dark, unknowable, arbitrary futures, but the circumstances are cartoonish. The fates that befall a number of characters, especially in the final few minutes of the film, feel ridiculous rather than earned.
As Kermode said, this is all more absurd than absurdist. In failing to mine our emotions, Sirat ends up being silly rather than profound and dull rather than exciting.
