Speaker stacks in the Moroccan desert, a horde of dusty ravers dancing for days on end. Luis (Sergi Lopez) is at the rave with his boy to look for his missing daughter. He’s up against the worse thing to happen to a person, a family member who’s gone missing. Why she went missing, where Sergi and the boy come from, we don’t know. Luis carries on, rudderless, but he carries on—his objective is clear. That night, when he comes up empty and the flyers fail to jog memories, he retreats to his car parked nearby. A small group of people will take off the next day to set up another rave, near the Mauritania border. Sergi and his boy will leave with them, pushing deeper into nothingness. The sense of isolation in “Sirat” is deepened by the vastness of the desert. Sergi and his son are journeying with a group of people who travel around the region to the rave, like the Beatles traveled to an ashram in India.

“Sirat” is a road movie with a strong musical element, the original techno soundtrack lent itself perfectly to the image. Also, this film is the most accurate depiction on film of what a rave is supposed to be like.

“Sirat” was directed by Oliver Laxe (pronounced “la-shay”), a Franco-Spanish filmmaker who lived in Morocco for a decade. This film is competing for the Palme D’Or.