By Leanor Allon, Second Year, English
Óliver Laxe's Sirāt (2025) follows a father alongside his son in a searching for his daughter, who disappeared at a rave months prior. In the mountains of Morocco, they follow a group of ravers in search of a party in an attempt to find her.
This live performance version of the film, performed at this year's Encounters Film Festival, included an expansion of the film’s soundtrack, which was composed by French DJ Kangding Ray and received nominations at the Golden Globes and World Soundtrack Awards. Combining projected visuals selected and mixed live from unseen footage shot by Laxe himself, it was a performance form never seen before in the UK. In conversation with me after the show, Ray (real name David Letillier) said that the live project was a continuation of the world of the film, insinuating that, after the release of the film, their work seemed unfinished as they still had more to display.
The scale of the project’s staging was undeniable in its magnitude. The big-screen projection of the film’s visuals, accompanied by Letillier’s cinematic live sound system, constructed an entirely palpable, immersive rave world. The film’s narrative was adapted to this new form of performance, intentionally placing the focus upon the rave itself, though a storyline was clear from Laxe’s selection of clips. Music is deeply engrained within Sirāt's narrative as the film highlights many aspects of rave and free party culture through its focus on the nomadic community making pilgrimages in the desert for underground parties, making the film and its soundtrack impossible to separate. This form of live rave recreation therefore functions as the perfect logical next step in the expansion of the film’s universe.
The show opens with low-angle shots of industrial trucks and fast-moving railways travelling through the desert. These images are cyclically returned to at the show’s end, almost as if the audience have accompanied the characters to and from the rave. Layered images of people dancing in the desert build in intensity until a chorus of ravers fill the screen. The day slowly progresses into night until the climax of the rave is reached. Neon lights converge with the techno soundtrack and standalone shots of the illuminated speakers are projected as the audience are presented with the same visual stimuli as the ravers on screen.
In an additional aspect of meta-theatre, Letillier himself DJ’d the festival in Spain where Sirāt’s rave scene was shot and is even featured in a clip of the film. Letillier calls it ‘a blurring of reality and fiction’ as he played the film’s soundtrack to the ravers live in the desert. In the film, once the night passes, day returns to expose the same visually striking, enveloping image of a screenful of ravers as the screen shakes aggressively until the focal point of a single hand clutching the speaker remains.
In The Prospect Building, we as the actively participating audience in motion are transported to the desert, becoming entangled with the performance, sonically surrounded by the rhythmic electronica of Letillier’s soundtrack. In conversation with Portishead’s Geoff Barrow at the Watershed as part of the festival, Laxe and Letillier revealed that none of the ravers filmed were actors. Instead, Laxe staged his own multi-day, potentially illegal, free party in northwestern Spain specifically for the film’s production. The party was attended by members of Spiral Tribe, the Dropping Caravan and Trackers – collectives rooted in the Free Party Movement of the 80s and 90s. Laxe and his then-partner Nadia Acimi, a long-time raver, were inspired to make the film when they attended events in the movement.
'In making this movie, I became a raver.' – Laxe in the Beverly Theatre Press Notes for Sirāt
Bristol’s status as not only a UNESCO City of Film but also an important landmark in the rave music scene makes it the perfect city within which to debut Sirāt Live. This is reflected in Letillier's own career arc as, before the explosion of Sirāt at last year's Cannes Film Festival, he was deeply involved in Berlin’s techno scene, regularly performing at Berghain, Kraftwerk Berlin, GASHOUDER and Tresor.
Janine Tan
‘You have to have lived it, you have to have danced in the dirt for twelve hours, and then you can tell the story.’ — Letillier in conversation with Geoff Barrow at the Watershed
In their three-year collaborative relationship and close friendship, him and Laxe have also been on multiple nights out together that fed into the creation of the film and live performance. Letillier states that Sirāt Live is intended to be performed again in different, unique renditions in New York and Amsterdam.
Feature Image: Leanor Allen / Sirāt Live
Did you catch Sirāt Live at Encounters Film Festival?
