Cannes Film Festival 2025: Oliver Laxe rocks the Croisette with "Sirat," a crazy thriller with hints of the end of the world and a journey of initiation

With this fable, which electrified the Cannes audience on Thursday, the Franco-Spanish director is in the running for the Palme d'Or.

Franco-Spanish director Oliver Laxe has been in the sights of the Cannes Film Festival since his debut. In 2010, with his very first feature film , You Are All Captains, he received the Fipresci Prize at the Directors' Fortnight. He returned to Critics' Week in 2016 with Mimosas , which earned him the Grand Prix, and in 2019, he received the Jury Prize for Fire Will Come in the Un Certain Regard section.

Oliver Laxe is aiming for the Palme d'Or for the first time with Sirat , presented at Cannes on Thursday, May 15, a dark and totally offbeat fable with Sergi Lopez at his best. The film, which literally shook the Croisette, will be released in theaters on September 3.

Sirat opens with a gigantic rave party in the middle of the Moroccan desert. In almost alien landscapes, the bodies of a crowd dance in unison in front of a wall of speakers that projects its vibrations at decibel levels that are unlikely to disturb the neighbors.

In the middle of this strange party, Luis (Sergi Lopez) arrives with his son Esteban (Bruno Nuñez, seen in the series La Mesias ). They distribute to the ravers the photo of Mar, Esteban's sister, who has been missing for several months. When the Moroccan army's armored vehicles arrive to evacuate the festival-goers, Luis, still hoping to find his daughter, decides to follow a handful of kind-hearted misfits to another party, which is to take place in a more turbulent part of the country where the advantages and comforts of the modern world no longer apply.

The deeper they delve into these desert landscapes, the more their journey becomes an extreme adventure that confronts them with the force of the earth, the elements, life in its most original form, and also, death.

In this timeless space, we believe we see the first men stranded on earth, or perhaps the last. "It's been the end of the world for a long time," one of the characters says to Luis, for whom this epic story becomes an inner journey, one that strikes him like lightning. Like a wake-up call to the world, when death has passed on its way.

An allegory of a world cut off from its roots, this film is a hypnotic fable, carried by sound, worked by the director like a physical material, seeming to emerge from the bowels of the earth and which resonates with the heart of the spectator. A heart on the verge of giving out when the adventure turns into a nightmare. The staging alternates very wide shots of the desert, of breathtaking beauty, and reserves moments of extreme tension. We jump. We cling to the seat.

With this radical film, Oliver Laxe brings us back to a primal humanity in the company of a group of shattered souls who have yet to see the brutality of the world. In this adventure, they will learn to accept the futility of their tiny lives.

This ultimate experience will perhaps lead them, as the final shot indicates, on the path to their own truth, in a single movement towards an open horizon, human among humans (for those who survive).

"The world forces us to look within ourselves, as the characters in the film do. And it's a fundamental gesture. An inner movement that we hope to share with Sirat : a light born from darkness," explains the director, who invites us to share, through the magic of his cinema, this incredible odyssey that bears the name "Sirat," "which could be translated as "path" or "way." A path with two dimensions, one physical, the other metaphysical or spiritual."

Radicalism, audacity, spectacle and spirituality, this explosive cocktail could well seduce the jury of this 78th edition.

Gender : Drama Directed by: Oliver Laxe With: Sergi Lopez, Bruno Nuñez, Jade Oukid Country : Spain, France Duration: 2h00 Exit: September 3, 2025 Distributor: Pyramid Distribution Synopsis : A father and son arrive at a remote rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They search for Mar—daughter and sister—who has been missing for months at one of these endless parties. Immersed in electronic music and a raw freedom that is alien to them, they tirelessly distribute her photo. Hope fades, but they persist and follow a group of ravers to one last party in the desert. As they delve deeper into the burning immensity, the journey confronts them with their own limits.