Sirât (2025)

Sirat and the Exploration of Contemporary Hopelessness

Oliver Laxe’s Sirat has been acclaimed incessantly since its release to audiences. While greatly meriting the discourse surrounding it, pinpointing its appeal within audiences has proven to be complex, as they often feel very polarized regarding the film. People either hate it or love it, but why? A criticism I have frequently encountered when discussing the movie with people is that they find it too ambiguous, struggling to understand precisely what is being conveyed and what Laxe is trying to say.

Nevertheless, at the very root of its narrative, Sirat is an indisputably critical film to understand and speak of in current times. We begin our journey in a desert, where sound equipment is being set up in anticipation of a rave. People of all ages and backgrounds work together, lifting speakers, testing the sound. Eventually, the crowd begins setting, and people pour in, covered in layers of grime and dust, shifting their bodies to the hypnotic techno beats.

Much of Sirat‘s impact comes not only from its narrative but from its aesthetic choices, which pull the viewer into the world of the ravers with an almost physical force. The grainy texture of the film stock creates a raw, tactile quality that feels archival, conjuring a sense of nostalgia for something half-remembered, while simultaneously situating the viewer in a hypermodern present amplified by the hypnotic contrast of the relentless soundscape against the starkness of the desert landscape, lulling us into a trance-like state where time and space dissolve. The sensory immersion seduces us into the group’s rhythm, allowing the aesthetic itself to function as a portal into this microcosm: a fragile, fleeting world that hovers between memory and futurity.

Raving is a form of alternative subculture; its general ideologies have existed for decades. This activity exists in opposition to a ‘natural’ way of life and hegemonic ideology. It operated according to its own set of rules and order. As seen in the film, it entirely rejects the established system and embodies a community-oriented, mixed gathering of individuals coming together to create an event for themselves and others.

This theme of community and chosen family is prevalent throughout the film, with a constant questioning and reevaluation of the traditional nuclear familial unit and classic relationships, such as father-son, brother-sister, and father-daughter dynamics, which are continually put into question and reframed. The ragtag troupe that we follow throughout the film does not focus on the individuals in the group. We often forget the names of individuals; instead, they operate as a group, a mass that had lives before they chose to live this lifestyle. They have scars from previous stories, issues, relationships, they faintly come through both physically and emotionally at some moments, but ultimately they make it clear throughout the film that they have chosen each other and that this replacing of a ‘normal’ lifestyle, and at times, while watching the film, the audience wonders if they would not prefer either.

The characters’ complicity and intimacy are incredibly touching, making us want to be a part of the group, just as Esteban and his father do. Even though they remain outsiders, the ravers bring a sense of open-mindedness and community, a seeming haven from the terror of what is happening around them. We, the viewers, are not yet integrated into this group. We, too, are observers, looking in awe at the way they live and help each other create their own ecosystem, which we eagerly want to join as well.

In essence, the film showcases and follows an alternate way of life, a parallel world that appears to operate in direct opposition to the one most people are familiar with. Still, as the film progresses, it becomes increasingly evident that these parallels are merely shifting reflections of the world.

In the context of a conflict and world war happening, it may seem futile to continue following these characters who seem not to care or want to listen to news from the ‘outside world’. However, even with their very existence acts in rejection of this external world, it seeps into their lives as well. They face conflicts, hardships, and situations omnipresent as part of the human experience.

By deceivingly presenting this subculture as a self-contained microcosm, Laxe illustrates both the allure of rejecting modern society and the inevitability of its pressures bleeding back in. Ultimately, Sirat exposes the fragile impossibility of building a true refuge outside the global conflicts existing in both the film’s world and our own.

This leaves us suspended in a haunting ambiguity: both captivated by this subculture’s resistance and unsettled by the hopelessness that inevitably seeps in.

Ilana Petit