A desperate elderly father shows up at a remote rave in the Moroccan wilderness in the hopes of locating his missing daughter. When the cops break up the party, he flees the scene with his young son following partiers headed to another rumored event even deeper in the desert. In director/co-writer Oliver Laxe’s Oscar-nominated film, any expectations or genre classifications are confounded by his startlingly unorthodox and riveting storytelling.
Buy SiratWe gradually get to know the ragtag group of ravers that the father has decided to follow, tooling along in their two lumbering offroad vehicles as he attempts to keep pace in a simple van. These are no performative weekend partiers cosplaying at EDC; they’re crusty hardcore EDM disciples that make Burning Man regulars look tame, fully devoting their hardscrabble lives to keeping the party going no matter how far they have to go to find it. And yet, they develop enough compassion for the grieving father to adopt him and his son into their hippie clan, slowly becoming a different family of sorts.
As the trek wears on with no sign of the next rave, it becomes clear that the journey is the destination, a never-ending road trip through wholly unpopulated wilderness with occasional tragic detours. It’s a bit like Mad Max: Fury Road with dashes of Sorcerer and Groove, but above all, it feels genuine with no cringey exploitation of rave culture. That’s partly due to the adroit casting of nearly all amateur non-actors, seemingly selected more for their scruffy physical characteristics and nonconformist vibes than any dramatic chops. In turn, they become fully formed characters because they ooze authenticity in their interactions, even if we never learn how they ended up on their peculiar path in life.
After a particularly traumatic endgame, Laxe refuses to wrap things up with a tidy bow, steering the trip to a somewhat hollow ending that is more crisis averted than mission accomplished. In lesser hands, the story would feel lacking and incomplete. That makes Laxe’s vision all the more impressive, as he somehow manages to fully enrapture audiences for two hours with few real actors, little forward plot development, and minimal payoff. Maybe it’s the high stakes for the sorrowful father, the surprising dangers potentially lurking around every turn in the desert, or the refreshingly informed treatment of rave culture and its underlying found-family dynamic, but the total package is an unforgettable knockout.
The Blu-ray presents the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound options. As a new film, technical details are as robust as expected, with the dusty and vast Moroccan vistas captured in scenic splendor by Director of Photography Mauro Herce. Kangding Ray’s hypnotic original music ranges toward haunting, tribal low-end beats rather than uplifting electronics, adding visceral and immersive punch to the opening rave scene and continuing to punctuate key moments of the trip. Bonus features abound, with looks at Laxe’s work on the film, Sergi Lopez as the father, Bruno Nunez Arjona as the young son, the family dynamics of the ravers, a segment on the crafting of the soundtrack, and a trailer.
