If you’ve ever buried something painful, refused to look at it, told yourself you’d deal with it later, this movie is going to find you. Óliver Laxe‘s Sirât, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, operates less like a film and more like a transmission from somewhere you’ve been trying to avoid. I wasn’t prepared for how deeply it would reach inside of my soul. I don’t think you can be.

The setup sounds straightforward, deceptively so. Luis (Sergi López, Pan’s Labyrinth), a Spanish father, arrives at a rave in the mountains of Morocco with his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona). They’re searching for Mar, Luis’s daughter, who disappeared into this world of endless desert parties and hasn’t been heard from in months. When the ravers pack up and head deeper into the Sahara for one final gathering, Luis and Esteban follow. What unfolds from there takes so many unexpected turns that describing them would spoil the experience entirely.

Laxe, whose previous films include Fire Will Come and Mimosas, has created something that feels almost like a controlled hallucination. The electronic score by Kangding Ray pounds beneath every scene, never letting you settle. Cinematographer Mauro Herce, shooting on Super 16mm, captures Morocco’s landscapes as both sanctuary and threat. One moment the desert glows golden and peaceful; the next it burns orange and hostile. I kept feeling calm and uneasy in the same breath, is this a journey toward discovery or danger?

Most of the supporting cast came from Europe’s underground rave scene rather than acting backgrounds, discovered through a street-casting process and bringing something no professional could fake. These are people who’ve been knocked flat by life and found something on the other side. Against them, López gives the best performance of his career as a man with no emotional vocabulary for what’s happening to him. He’s almost childlike in certain ways, which makes watching him navigate tragedy even more devastating.

I connected with Sirât because it refuses to look away. When something unbearable happens, the camera stays. When characters face emotions they can’t process, the film sits with them. Some viewers will find this too intense. That’s fair. But there’s something valuable here for anyone who has ever pushed down feelings they weren’t ready to face. The title refers to both the bridge between heaven and hell in Islamic tradition and simply “the path.” By the end, I understood. Sometimes you have to cross through one place to reach another.