Oliver Laxe’s fourth feature, Sirat, arrives more like an event than an award-winning arthouse release. Since premiering at Cannes, where it shared the jury prize and won the soundtrack award, the film has steadily gained an audience, drawn less by plot than by the immersive experience. No film since Julia Ducournau’s Titane has made quite so much noise on the festival circuit.
Set against a desert rave and an unfolding threat of global apocalypse, Sirat has become a word-of-mouth sensation, praised for its surround sound design, physical intensity and deepening mysteries. We’ll say no more. There are so many rug-pull moments that even the scantiest description of Sirat counts as a spoiler.
“Making Sirat was therapeutic,” says Laxe of his desert rave epic. “I study Gestalt psychotherapy. Dancing connects you to trauma and memory. It heals. We must celebrate our wounds if we want to grow.”
Laxe, about 2m (6ft 7in) tall with inky hair reaching beneath his shoulders, has an enormously striking presence. At the recent lunch for Oscar nominees – Sirat is up for best international film and best sound – he seemed scarcely less glamorous than the nominated actors. At the European Film Awards, several Italian journalists blessed themselves and cried out “mamma mia” as he passed by.
Hailing from Galicia, northwestern Spain, Laxe (43) is also a sharp, incisive talker. He has had much to explain since that sensational Cannes premiere.
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