An unlikely Oscars 2026 nominee is a tense, gut-wrenching odyssey through the desert – with one of the best scores this awards season

Sirāt is up for two Academy Awards at the Oscars 2026: Best International Film and Best Sound. In the latter, it could be an underdog winner: the Spanish movie takes a score by French experimental musician Kangding Ray to make a love letter to the rave scene that quickly descends into a hellish cautionary tale. But against what, exactly, is up to us, according to its director.

The movie follows Luis, played by Pan's Labyrinth star Sergi López, who's joined by his young son Esteban and their small dog Pipa as he searches for his missing daughter Mar at a rave in the Moroccan desert. When the party is broken up by the local army, who demand the evacuation of all European visitors in the face of political upheaval, Luis decides to tag along with a group of nomadic ravers who are about to set off through the Sahara to another party, closer to Mauritania, in case Mar is there instead.

The film's striking opening scene is full of contrast that feels precarious and uneasy: ancient rocks in a landscape that's millions of years old vibrate with electronic music that's barely 50 years old. As the camera pans down to the ravers, it's easy to get carried away in the hedonism. Bodies sway and move almost as one mass, completely lost in the music, separate but in unspoken community with one another.

Laxe filmed this scene at a real rave, so the dancers on screen were real attendees rather than extras (and the group who Luis tags along with are all played by non-actors scouted at clubs and festivals, too). These people shouldn't be out here, but it's hard not to see the allure of the party.

Hell and Paradise

In Islam, As-Sirāt is the bridge that passes over to the fires of Hell to take a person to Paradise. It's said to be thinner than a strand of hair and as sharp as the sharpest knife. In this film, though, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was inverted. If the rave is paradise (and for Luis' new friends, at least, it is), then our group of protagonists may well be going to hell in a handbasket – or a camper van. The deeper into the desert they go, they find themselves thoroughly out of their depth (think Mad Max crossed with Gus van Sant's Gerry and soundtracked by a techno score and you're maybe halfway there).

The desert is an unpredictable beast, then, especially as a filming location, but Laxe insisted that making a film "has to be difficult" in a post-screening Q&A that I attended. Sirāt was inspired by his time living in Morocco, where, he says, people were surrounded by death. "You die watching this film, right?" he asked the audience. And sure, there's certainly enough tension to make you feel like that. We're never made to feel at peace in the desert, and neither are the film's characters – despite their best efforts.

There are some jarring colonial overtones in the film that Laxe remains consistently and purposefully vague about when asked: local people are trying to get away as our band of thrill-seeking Europeans barter with them for gas to go further into the desert and, in a film set in the Western Sahara, the overwhelming majority of faces we see are white.

Cautionary tales

Why, exactly, evacuations are taking place is never elaborated on, either – the group flicks through radio channels as they drive, getting snippets of information here and there, but ultimately always switching it off before they get the full story. World War 3 may be breaking out, but that's none of their business.

When an audience member asked Laxe if North African people taking a backseat in this film was intentional or if he'd thought about the implications of this, he refused to elaborate.

But, to me, Sirāt reads as an indictment rather than a careless piece of filmmaking, and a cautionary tale of sorts: the ancient landscape always fights back, pushing our protagonists to their limits as they journey through a place they ultimately belong. At the present moment, this works as both an environmentalist warning and a message about Western exceptionalism in the face of political or social upheaval: none of this will help you in the long run.

In the film's final shot, in particular, as the weary travelers' journey comes to an anticlimactic end, it couldn't be clearer – our privileges can only keep us safe for so long, but we're all going to end up in the same place in the end.

Sirāt is out now in UK cinemas. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.