SIRAT**

Frack me, SIRAT is a steaming pile of pretentious wank. I rarely agree with Peter Bradshaw's reviews in the Guardian but he was absolutely spot on in calling this the most over-rated film of 2025.  He wrote that the final part of this film descends into Monty-Python-esque absurdity and once you see that it's hard to unsee it. I felt that writer-director Oliver Laxe might have been trying to make some deep and meaningful point about the savagery of life but got lost up his own backside.  It's actually a real shame because Laxe clearly knows how to create a stunning visual and how to score it. Maybe he should just do music videos?

The movie opens in Morocco where middle-aged schlubby dad Luis (Sergi López) and his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) are derping around raves trying to find their missing daughter/sister.  They join up with a group of feckless hippies on a humbug and start journeying across a desert in a convoy of vans trying to find another rave that the daughter might be at. It all seems rather vague.  There are some soldiers - it's unsafe - there are landmines.  Anyways, bad stuff starts happening and keeps on happening - to the characters and to the viewers.  The movie lurches off-piste and then gives up all hopes of any kind of emotional impact or gravitas. 

SIRAT is rated R and has a running time of 115 minutes. It played Cannes 2025 where it won the Jury Prize. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It went on release in the USA last November and will be released in the UK on February 27th.