This Gripping 2025 International Drama Has the Most Heartbreaking Twist

To call a film a true “cinematic experience” has become an overused sentiment, as there are few titles that wouldn’t benefit from being shown on the widest and loudest screen possible. That being said, there are some films that are so immersive and captivating that they require viewers to be locked in for an emotional and psychological journey. Few films from 2025 are as intense and unforgettable as Sirat, a Spanish thriller that was submitted by the nation as its contender for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. Although it follows a premise similar to the classic French thriller The Wages of Fear and William Friedkin’s 1977 remake Sorcerer, Sirat is such a captivating work of technicality that its emotional twists hit like a freight train.

Sirat is a film that benefits from a degree of vagueness, as it is set during an ambiguous point in the near future where a worldwide conflict may be occurring well beyond the confines of the story. Sergi Lopez stars as Luis, a father who travels with his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) into the desert of Morocco to look for his daughter, Mar, who has gone missing and is thought to be in danger. While Sirat may have initially seemed like an epic survival adventure, director Oliver Laxe turns the pulsating journey into a nightmarish, surrealist odyssey that is sure to send any audience member spiraling into a state of anxiety.

‘Sirat’ Delivers a Bewildering Twist Halfway Through

What makes Sirat such an impressive achievement in directing is that Laxe is able to keep escalating the stakes of the situation without ever giving a clear definition as to why Mar is threatened, and why Luis is under such pressure to find her. Instead of explaining the parameters of the environment through expositional means, Sirat uses percussive, overbearing music and stark visuals to show the chaos of the rave culture that dominates the mysterious desert. The presence of such modernist, aggressive music makes for a stark contrast with the performance by Lopez, as Luis is a very reserved and restrained character. The film is able to overshadow the many instances in which he’ll have to compromise his beliefs by teaming Luis up with an unusual rouge’s gallery of travelers who embark alongside him on the journey; visually, Sirat eels reminiscent of such classic “desert” movies as Mad Max, Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, and Once Upon a Time in the West.

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The punch-to-the-gut that Sirat provides in the midst of the story is that the film disorients the audience by changing which characters they should be concerned about. Although Luis’ anxiety about losing Mar begins reaches its apex, he finds himself unable to prevent his vehicle from slipping off the side of a cliff whilst Esteban is still inside. The cruel irony is that he went into the desert trying to save one child, only to lose another; as a result, Luis is in a fazed, bewildered sense of grief throughout the rest of the film, which explains why he is so prone to making radical decisions. Perhaps the most indicative moment is a scene towards the end when he marches straight through a plot of land with explosives underneath, and does not seem to be concerned about accidentally triggering a detonation. Thanks to the increasingly strenuous weather conditions and distance between the desert and any other piece of civilization, Luis’ journey to find Mar begins to increasingly feel like a descent into hell.

‘Sirat’ Is an Achievement in Visceral Filmmaking

In a year filled with films like Hamnet, One Battle After Another, Die My Love, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You that deal with the difficulties of being a parent, Sirat is able to justify its heartbreaking twist in order to not feel like it was done purely for shock value. Although Sirat examines the lengths that a parent might go to in order to save their child, it also suggests that they can’t always be a guardian, and are helpless in predicting the cruelty of fate. Luis is forced to make so many split-second decisions that he never has a moment to sit back and contemplate what he will say to Mar, or what degree of responsibility he feels for Esteban’s death. The fact that he never finds her at the end of the film is the perfect type of ambiguous ending, as it suggests that in some ways Luis will always be on an incomplete mission. The fact that he’s become ignorant of a potentially catastrophic event occurring through a potential third world war only emphasizes how blind he’s become to any other goal.

Sirat is an exciting contender in this year’s Best International Feature race because it’s a film that’s hard to pin down to just one genre, and could be described as a neo-western adventure, a spiritual epic, an apocalyptic thriller, a family drama, and even an absurdist dark comedy. The brilliant score by Kangding Ray feels like a character in its own right, and Lopez gives an uncharacteristically sensitive and moving performance that is vastly different from his most memorable role as the villainous Captain in Pan’s Labyrinth. 2025 has been a year in which international cinema has proven to be more popular than ever in the domestic market, and even the biggest cinephiles can’t say that they’ve ever seen anything like Sirat before.

Sirat is currently streaming on Netflix, AppleTV and Prime.