A Spanish father’s search for his missing daughter is the entry point (shades of Taken) for this extraordinary arthouse odyssey that wastes no time in subverting all possible expectations. Sergi López is the careworn, quietly shattered father, Luis, who with his preteen son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) is diligently attempting to trace his daughter from her last known whereabouts in Morocco, shoving homemade flyers into the hands of the hardcore clubbers, drifters and acid-fuelled reprobates who crisscross the desert landscape for a series of pop-up raves.

Soon, however, the army arrives, as do rumblings of World War Three, and Luis and Esteban hitch a ride with a convoy of clubbers, which nudges the film into the realms of Mad Max, The Wages of Fear and the Seventies sci-fi classic Silent Running — a super-wide aerial shot of two diesel-powered party wagons at night, headlights blaring as they roll across the vast implacable blackness, has intergalactic echoes. The dreamy electronic dance score from Kangding Ray only adds to the futuristic undertow.

And then, barely an hour into the action, the director, Óliver Laxe (Fire Will Come), detonates the kind of jaw-dropping plot swerve that would upend a lesser movie. Here it’s merely a signal for the film to dive, with furious abandon, to even darker, weirder and unforeseeable places. This is original, explosive (literally — you’ll see!) and ovation-worthy cinema.

To say more about the twists (there are several) would be to neutralise them but it’s enough to know that Laxe works diligently and sensitively with López, Arjona and a plethora of nonprofessional actors to create a sweetly credible ensemble for the film’s first, and more familiar, half. Our protagonists sprint across the desert ahead of a global meltdown (radio news snippets tell of Nato allies, bombings and closed borders) and towards a mythical rave in Mauritania.

The French photographer Jade Oukid, playing a defiant goth rebel, makes a big impression, as does the one-legged street performer Tonin Janvier, who displays the instincts of a natural scene-stealer. The air of a travelling circus hangs over the squad and they appear to offer new beginnings for young Esteban and potential forgiveness for the conservative Luis, who, it is implied, is partially responsible for his daughter’s desertion.

The rumours of cinema’s demise, of course, are greatly exaggerated. And if, as now seems likely, mainstream Hollywood blockbusters are soon to be supplanted by glossy-looking AI slop, then movies such as Sirat will be a vital template for the future direction of film-making. Laxe has said that he wanted his film to remind the audience of “the best of genre and popular cinema — the magic of adventure”. Yet he also wanted to create “an experience that would shake you”.

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The stars here, all AI-free, are the real desert locations in the Sahara and Teruel, northern Spain, which doubles for the Atlas Mountains. The early gob-smacking set pieces, as thrilling as anything in the Fast & Furious franchise, feature the ravers’ vans roaring into view and thundering past giant red mesas, and all the while Ray’s dance score is thumping underneath, rattling the sternum, slyly raising the pulse and establishing the adrenalised momentum for the mayhem to follow.

There are thoughtful touches throughout, including sequences that compare the black desert loudspeakers to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Kaaba in Mecca. The second hour of the film is impossibly tense and gripped by the sense that Luis, internally and externally, is passing over his own “sirat” — aka, according to the film’s title card, “the bridge that connects hell and paradise”.

Produced by Pedro Almodóvar, this is the underdog nominee in the best international film category at the Oscars. The smart, and dreary, money is on Sentimental Value. But Sirat really deserves to win.
★★★★★
15, 114min
In cinemas

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