San Sebastián - Pedro Almodóvar was one of the first to recognize that Sirât is not just a film. Currently showing in Brazilian cinemas, the rival to The Secret Agent in the race for the Oscar for best international film is a sensory and transcendental experience like few others ever produced in cinema.
“From the script, it was clear that the film would be very impactful, as it was something practically never seen before,” said Almodóvar, one of the producers who helped bring Sirât to life. He embraced the project with his company, El Deseo, helping to finance what would be Spain's Oscar entry, budgeted at €6.5 million.
“The whole concept is very cinematic, based on sound, atmosphere and the attitude of the characters. Like so many in today's world, who don't see many possibilities for existence in this society, they embark on a sensory adventure where all that matters is dancing,” said Almodóvar, before the first screening of Sirât at the last San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF), which was covered by NeoFeed .
Yes, Sirât is set in the rave scene, where a crowd is swept away by the sound of electronic music, with religious devotion, in southern Morocco. The gateway to this universe is the arrival of a father, Luis, played by Sergi López, who travels with his son, Esteban, in search of his missing daughter. The young woman was last seen at a rave in the Moroccan desert.
After unsuccessfully asking around if anyone at the party had seen his daughter, he decides to follow a group by car towards the country's border with Mauritania, where a "mythical rave" is about to take place. Along the way, father and son end up forming a connection with the strangers, who live only to attend raves, jumping from one to another as if the real world had nothing good to offer.
Amidst numerous dangers, the journey through the desert and the days-long festivities reveals itself to be increasingly mysterious and metaphysical. It's as if the characters need to learn, and more importantly, accept, that much of life is completely beyond their control. And often, in the worst possible way.
“The film was born from my need to meditate on death. Only by thinking about it does a human being realize how small he is,” said the screenwriter and director of Sirât , the Spaniard Óliver Laxe, in a meeting with the public and the press in San Sebastián.
The word he chose for the title means, in Islam, the extremely narrow bridge over the fires of hell that everyone must cross on Judgment Day if they want to reach paradise. This gives an idea of what the characters will have to face, with music as another protagonist in the story, forming part of the narrative structure.
“Our screenplays are quite atmospheric, with descriptions of emotional states and music, which is already part of our vocabulary in cinema,” said Laxe, partner here with writer Santiago Fillol, with whom he has already made O Que Arde (2019) and Mimosas (2016).
Also nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound and winner of six Goyas (the Spanish Oscars), including Best Original Music and Best Sound, Sirât is divided into three parts in terms of sound design. Initially, the director employs cathartic and tribal music. "The focus here falls on the beat, the pulse, the percussion, and the trance that music often provides," he commented.
The second part of the film takes on a more existentialist tone, evoking emotions and a great deal of melancholy, which paves the way for the more spiritual dimension of the third and final segment. "It is at this moment that we ask ourselves what the hell we are doing in the world, falling into that feeling of abandonment," said Laxe.
He acknowledges that sacred or classical music is generally chosen to accompany the most transcendental moments in film. “But I believe that electronic music offers something more because we don't know where the sounds come from, since they don't necessarily originate from an instrument. In other words, there's a greater potential here to evoke the mystery of a subtle world, behind the one we know.”
And why set the story specifically in the world of raves, considered escapist? What does this subculture, which originated in the 1980s, represent to you?
“In a society where it’s increasingly difficult to be consistent, with our values aligned with our actions, I’ve always had great admiration for ravers ,” said Laxe, who lived in Morocco for ten years, where he frequented these parties. “They were the only ones I met there with a genuine interest in others. And not only that, but with an ability to understand others, always with generosity,” highlighted the filmmaker, who only cast ravers (and not actors) for the roles here.
And he added: “They are people with more powerful antennae. When they dance, they transmit their emotional state to everyone. And when they realize that someone is sad, they try to help. It's something that humanity seems to have forgotten, even though insects, highly sensitive to others of the same species, do it.”
