Sirāt (OmU)

In the organizer's words:

A father travels with his son to a remote rave in the desert of southern Morocco. Surrounded by raw, electronic music, the two search for their daughter and sister, who disappeared months ago at one of these never-ending, sleepless parties. As hope fades, they follow a small group of ravers through the Moroccan mountains, plunging deeper and deeper into a glowing wilderness between heaven and hell, intoxication and borderline experience.

To the music of Kangding Ray, the Cannes Prix du Jury winner makes the cinema shake. Sirāt is an ecstatic fever dream as a radical reflection on the fragility of human existence and the illusion of Western security. With poetic images and brute sound, Óliver Laxe stages how unstable our physical and emotional structures are and how alien people can be in their own world. The desert shows its romantic, but also uncompromising side: it is graceful, hypnotic and unyielding. In an almost documentary-like realism, it becomes a spiritual test and an unsparing emotional carrier for the film characters on their spiritual journey through sand, pain and symbolic silence. Radio broadcasts, end-time radio news and an ominous military contingent underscore the creeping existential threat to the landscape. The film overcomes the alienation from the natural backdrop by making it possible to experience a reality that is far removed from Western comfort. A trance-like odyssey that blurs the boundaries between myth and rave, Sirāt becomes an immersive cinematic experience and a powerful, unforgettable wake-up call to the apparent romance of dropping out.