‘Sirāt’ Trailer: Oliver Laxe’s Madly Lush Moroccan Survival Flick Gets a Nerve-Shredding New Look

The Cannes Jury Prize winner is also nominated for two Golden Globes and shortlisted in five Oscar categories.

The first official U.S. trailer for “Sirāt” feels like a warning shot, less interested in teasing its unexpected survival plot than in dropping prospective viewers into its fierce landscape of pulsing bass, scorched earth, and emotional freefall.

Directed by Oliver Laxe (“Fire Will Come,” “You All Are Captains”), the 2025 Cannes standout follows a father and son as they plunge into the rave scene of southern Morocco to search for their missing daughter and sister, only to find an underworld more perilous than they could have expected.

Luis (Sergi López) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) arrive deep in the mountains, clutching a photo of Mar. She disappeared months earlier at one of these sleepless parties, and now her family has no choice but to canvas strangers in a place that feels more lawless than loving or communal. When a tip takes them further into the desert, the pair press on — even as the terrain turns forbiddingly hostile.

That premise only hints at what Laxe delivers. As critic David Katz wrote for IndieWire in his “A-” review, “Sirāt” is a “sui generis” work that resists classification while still nailing visceral, sometimes crowd-pleasing thrills. Born in France but a staple of Moroccan cinema, Laxe has a talent for scaling international borders and belief systems to peer into worlds that feel dangerously tactile and spiritually slippery. The trailer leans hard into tension, juxtaposing profound familial grief with the rhythm of indifference inherent to drugged-up dance culture and an unstable geopolitical backdrop.

Critically acclaimed, “Sirāt” is shortlisted in five categories at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best International Feature (Spain), Best Cinematography, Best Music (Original Score), and Best Sound. It won Best Music Score from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and earned nominations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, European Film Awards, and the Gotham Awards. “Sirāt”promises a journey that treats emotional and physical obstacles as equal narrative forces, daring audiences to cross a transcendent bridge between despair and euphoria, without knowing what’s on the other side.

Watch the trailer for “Sirāt,” in select theaters on February 6 after a qualifying run last year, below.