The Rave at the End of the World

Desert raves like Burning Man have the ability to transport you to a different plane of existence, albeit temporarily. When the music stops and the drugs wear off, the world’s problems come rushing back from the peripheries of the frame. This is the fragile dichotomy that frames Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt,” a singular road movie about a middle-aged Spanish father, Luis (Sergi López), in search of his teenage daughter in the Moroccan desert. Along with his adolescent son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their adorable puppy Pipa, he approaches Bohemian dancers with missing person fliers in the hopes that one of them might have seen her. During his search, an unseen global catastrophe takes place, plunging nations into war. The characters hear about this eruption over the radio, though none of them seem surprised. Their world, like ours, appears to have been on the brink of collapse for some time.

The film’s title refers to the fragile Quranic bridge between paradise and hell; it’s appropriate for a work that feels not only spiritual (Laxe is a practicing Muslim), but purgatorial. It opens in the middle of nowhere, with a group of partygoers setting up a thumping sound system resembling temple pillars at the base of a lonely mountain in southern Morocco. The mostly white European revelers are soon interrupted by Moroccan soldiers who arrive with express orders to shepherd European Union citizens to safety. Rather than complying and following the troops, Luis and Esteban join a makeshift recreational vehicle caravan of kindly European outcasts — Bigui (Richard Bellamy), Stef (Stefania Gadda), Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson), Tonin (Tonin Janvier) and Jade (Jade Oukid) — who ignore the evacuation order and set off to find another, possibly mythical party they’ve heard about, where they may or may not find Luis’ daughter.

It’s during this perilous journey that “Sirāt” takes shape as a work of hair-raising dramatic tension, as well a fable about community that embodies the raver’s code of PLUR: Peace, Love, Unity and Respect. The unforgiving terrain of the parched desert and its jagged mountains force the young partygoers (some of them disabled and missing limbs) into impossibly difficult scenarios. Luis’ car needs to be towed across a tiny river, a scene filmed with the young Núñez Arjona dangling from the car’s window. An RV’s wheels get stuck between rocks, trapping the group on a vertigo-inducing cliff. It’s a film that feels dangerous to watch, making you wonder how its actors and crew members made it out alive.

Although “Sirāt” poses questions about the Europeans’ presence in Africa, the story’s politics take a back seat to aesthetics and tone. Composer Kangding Ray’s anxious soundscape embodies the characters’ beloved techno, but melds it with the electronic operas of Vangelis, creating haunting echoes that reverberate through the empty landscape. Few films this year have felt so consistently foreboding. Cinematographer Mauro Herce’s scorching palette creates a sense of desperation and urgency in the sweltering heat. The lengthy transitional scenes of vehicles charging through dust offer time for reflection, but also evoke “Mad Max: Fury Road” in the characters’ perilous journey toward an explosive climax.

Given the mounting dangers they face — and their escalating emotional anguish — further disaster feels inevitable, as though the dominoes had been set in motion by past wars and the detritus they left behind. The film’s hair-raising final act, although steeped in man-made chaos, plays like divine cruelty. Its violence feels random and unpredictable, forcing the characters to confront the question of whether these deadly outcomes were fated by a world intent on destroying itself, or if they brought them upon themselves. Either way, “Sirāt” is sympathetic to the temptation to escape and party in the face of oblivion. Perhaps, Laxe seems to be suggesting, when being alive and feeling dead are separated by a razor-thin membrane, all you can do is dance while being slowly claimed by the desert.