#oliver-laxe

#oliver-laxe

Since the advent of the rave in the late 1980s, filmmakers have attempted to incorporate underground dance festivals into their works with varying degrees of success. Oliver Laxe has now graced us with a hypnotic party for the ages in "Sirāt," Spain's 2026 Oscar submission for international feature - a rave that isn't just eye candy but a central plot point, where a middle-age father (Sergi López) searches for his missing daughter as the world descends into chaos.

Oliver Laxe leads his audience into a wilderness of non-meaning in this strange and unrewardingly oppressive film that was the joint jury prize winner at Cannes this year and the recipient of all sorts of critical superlatives. For me, Sirat is the most overpraised movie of the year exasperating and bizarre in ways that become less and less interesting and more and more ridiculous as the film wears on.

Just as "Sirāt" is a twisty thriller that takes you unexpected places on its tragic journey into the dystopian desert unknown, the heady filmmaker behind it, Oliver Laxe, is not your average interview. His fourth European feature, "Sirāt" is his breakout: It wowed critics at Cannes, shared the Jury prize, and won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for Best Composer for Kangding Ray.

Back to selectionWith the 63rd edition of the New York Film Festival kicking off tomorrow (Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt is the Opening Night Film), we at Filmmaker offer a list of 20 recommendations, the majority films we've seen and reviewed out of other festivals, a list augmented with a couple of strongly anticipated titles. Find below recommendations from Vadim Rizov, Blake Williams, Natalia Keogan, Leonardo Goi, Vikram Murthi, Nicolas Rapold and Sofia Bohdanowicz, with links to their coverage. For more information and tickets, visit the NYFF site.