Parky At the Pictures (27/2/2026)

(Reviews of Sirāt; and The Spin)

SIRĀT.

Having made three shorts in the mid-2000s,

French-born Galician director, Óliver Laxe, established his reputation with a trio of distinctive features. Now, he has followed You All Are Captains (2010), Mimosas (2016), and Fire Will Come (2019) with Sirāt, which takes its title from the Arabic word for hair-thin, but razor sharp bridge between Heaven and Hell. In addition to winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, the film (which boasts Pedro Almodóvar among its producers and has just two professional actors in the cast) has also been nominated for Best Sound and Best International Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

In the hope of finding the adult daughter who has been away from home for five months, Luis (Sergi López) heads to southern Morocco, with his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), and their dog, Pipa. He has been told that Mar has gone to a rave in the desert and shows her photograph around those dancing in front of the giant bank of speakers that has been erected in front of a chiselled red rock face of a remote canyon. On the second day, however, troops arrive to proclaim a national emergency and urge EU citizens to board the transport provided. However, a number of campers break away from the convoy and Esteban tells Luis to follow them.

Free Party veterans Steff (Stefania Gadda), Jade (Jade Oukid), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Bigui (Richard Bellamy), and Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson) try to warn Luis that he is taking a risk in following them, as heading south towards Mauritania will take them into some dangerous territory, as the political situation is so unpredictable. They listen to news reports about war breaking out and pass refugees on the road. Yet they decide to press on after purchasing petrol cans from some haggling men with donkeys.

On reaching a river, Luis watches as the two heavier vehicles make it across and drive away. Cursing coming on this foolhardy expedition, he is relieved when the ravers return and reverse the all-terrain motor into the water to tow the camper van across. It floods as they edge across, but Luis is just relieved not to have been stranded and the ravers gruffly acknowledge his thanks. Esteban wants to share his bar of chocolate with them, but Luis thinks they should conserve their meagre supplies. When he takes a few pieces to the camper, Jade invites him in and shows him a speaker she has fixed. He smiles when she echoes Mar's contention that music is for dancing not listening and she tries to reassure him that his daughter will be fine. She's also useful next morning, when Pipa falls ill after eating some LSD-laced faeces and Jade feeds her some milk.

Tonin amuses the others by putting his leg stump through the collar of a white shirt and sings a song in French using his prosthetic as a guitar. Steff gives Esteban cornrows on one side of his head, while Tonin and Bigui (whose right hand is missing) persuade Luis to pool their food supplies. Having seen a military convoy heading south, they decide to take the mountain route and Josh worries that they're driving into the end of the world. He struggles with the cumbersome camper on treacherous roads while driving in the rain at night. They stop when he gets stuck in a pothole and everyone works to free the tyre next morning. Concerned that Esteban and Pipa are playing too near the edge, Luis tells him to wait in the camper. But, while the boy plays with his pet, the vehicle slips its brake and rolls backwards and Luis is powerless to prevent it from rolling backwards over the precipice.

Naturally, he is devastated and the others try to console him. But they know they can't get down to the crash site and press on with Luis sobbing in the larger camper. After a spell on flat terrain, they reach a settlement and siphon fuel out of a couple of abandoned cars. A young goatherd sees them, but shies away when they approach him for help. In a daze, Luis wanders into the desert and the others find him after darkness falls curled up on the sand.

Parking for the night, Jade suggests playing some music through their twin speakers and they share a drug made from a ground plant before they start dancing. Still in shock, Luis shuffles awkwardly with his arms outstretched, while the others begin to move to the beat. However, Jade steps on a landmine and Tonin is also killed as he rushes over to help her. Josh and Steff bundle the sobbing Bigui into the camper and Luis looks back at the carnage with incomprehension. As they chat over a joint during the night, Josh tells Luis that Tonin had seen Esteban's body when he had peered over the side of the road and Luis vows to collect his son as soon as he can.

Realising the peril they're in, the group send the camper down an incline in the hope of finding a safe route to some rocky ground. However, it blows up and the second vehicle goes the same way after it's knocked off line by a tyre grazes a mine as it rolls forwards. Now without shelter, the foursome has no option than to pick their way and hope not to tread on anything. Luis picks up the ravers' dog, Lupita, and follows the tracks to the burning 911 truck. They sip the last of the water and look on aghast as Luis strides off in the direction of the rocks. He reaches them safely and Bigui sets off after him. However, he is blown up, although Steff and Josh (carrying Lupita) somehow make it through with their eyes shut. On the brow of a hill, they look back at the smouldering vehicles and press on. As the film ends, they hitch a ride on the roof of a train, along with dozens of other men, women, and children. There's no sign of the dog, however.

That the absence of Lupita from the closing sequence should prove such a pressing issue rather suggests that Laxe has failed to involve at least this viewer in the tragic fate of his human characters. There is no doubt that this allegorical journey into the unknown is filled with harrowing moments and striking images. Yet the dearth of backstory and the vagueness of the off-screen conflict make it difficult to identify with the characters, regardless of the intensity and wretchedness of their situation. Led by the ever-impressive Sergi López, the cast couldn't do more. It's just that the scenario concocted by Laxe and Santiago Fillol feels specious at the outset and becomes increasingly convoluted as it progresses, without pausing once to aver why Luis felt so compelled to follow Mar into the wilderness that he put her brother at risk by having him tag along when he might have been better left at home (with his dog) with a relative, in the conceded absence of a mother.

No doubt Laxe has been influenced by the likes of Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953) and William Friedkin's remake, Sorceror (1977), in the way he shows rocks crumbling away beneath grinding wheels. There are also echoes of John Ford's The Searchers (1956) in Luis's doomed mission, Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) in the depiction of the landscape, David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) in the nightmarish uncertainty of the expedition, and of George Miller's Fury Road (2015) in the punkish sense of independence that is worn like a badge of outsider honour by the ravers. Yet, while it makes the film more persuasive as a work of cinematic art, such self-reflexivity does little to make the storyline more plausible or the characters more relatable. The same goes for the subwoofer-pounding throb of Kangding Ray's techno score, which complements the enveloping potency of Laia Casanova's Oscar-nominated sound design and the raw beauty of cinematographer Mauro Herce's views of the forbidding terrain.

No doubt others will identify among the opacities and ambiguities profound reflections on human nature in extremis, the fate of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, the awe-inspiring majesty of our indifferent planet, and the vast unknowableness of existence. Some may even credit Laxe with pushing the boundaries of screen storytelling by disregarding classical constructs in his supreme creative confidence. Yet, while this is undeniably bold and sometimes brilliant, it compounds its thematic naiveté with an aura of anti-psychological self-satisfaction that makes it very difficult to like. Moreover, it occasionally feels pretentious and even preposterous and they are tough sensibilities for any putative masterpiece to overcome.

THE SPIN.

There's been a handful of enjoyable documentaries about searching for rare records, with Alan Zweig's Vinyl (2000), Edward Gillan's Desperate Man Blues (2003), and Vincent Vittorio's Record Safari (2020) being the picks. Now Michael Head's The Spin follows a similar route, with the occasional backward nod towards Stephen Frears's 2000 Chicagoised take on Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.

Dermot (Brenock O'Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan) run Boneyard Records in Omagh, County Tyrone. However, they are behind with the rent and landlady Sadie (Tara Lynne O'Neill) is keen for the duo to default so that she can cancel the lease and sell it to a hotel-building developer. With people forever coming in to ask for keys to be cut or TVs to be repaired, Dermot is close to the end of his tether. No one listens to his soulful set at the local pub and girlfriend Rose (Maura Higgins) is too tired to listen to him pouring his heart out. But hope dawns when they spot a newspaper piece about a Cork man selling his record collection and they agree to head south in order to dupe the rube (Barry Devlin) into selling his rare Robert Johnson discs so that they can flog them on for a small fortune.

The divorced Elvis doesn't just need the windfall for the rent, as he has promised his young daughter, Lily (Cait Ellis-Gowland), that he will buy her a pony for her birthday. Dermot questions the wisdom of the idea, as they set off in an old car borrowed from Elvis's mother. They marvel at the passing scenery, stopping off to admire a waterfall and wonder why anyone would think concrete was better than woodland. When they reach the border, Dermot lies down in the road to demonstrate where it lies and has to be yanked out of the way of an unrushing car. He's spooked by the experience and not amused when Elvis jokes that he would have had to carry on to Cork with a corpse in the boot.

While Sadie flirts with Frank the developer (Adam McFarland), Elvis and Dermot take a detour to the seaside town of Bundoran. They ride the dodgems, see a film about a shark with legs, and eat chips by the sea. Elvis bumps into Debbie (Amy McElhatton) and they complement each other on their jacket badges before he confides in Dermot that his Elvis-impersonating father had brought him to see Meatloaf at the Astoria Ballroom before flitting out of his life. Dermot reassures him that he's a much better dad and they nip off for a pint.

The night goes better than expected for Dermot, however, and he has to flee a gun-toting father, while Elvis wakes up in his chicken coop. Having somehow lost their wallets, they have to do a runner from a barman and a petrol-pump attendant in order to get back on the road. Getting lost, they pick up a farmer with a stuffed fox (Joe Savino), a nun (Claire Malone), and an American stripper (Kimberly Wyatt) and they squeeze into the back seat before they run out of fuel and have to push the car to the nearest town. Dermot notices that Jimmy the Fist and the McKowski Family Band are playing at a nearby pub and he jams on a number. Elvis bumps into Debbie and they kiss. However, they all end up in the cells after Jimmy gets in a fight and Elvis is hurt because Dermot had told him to go to Cork alone because he had accepted an invitation to go to America with the band.

The boys are not on speaking terms when they are released. But the nun has left them a few euros to get them back on the road and they make it to Cork. However, the seller has just lost everything to a pair of bailiffs, who accept a backhander (the £50 that Elvis's dad had given him years before and which he had never spent) to rescue the records. Feeling bad at duping the old man (who has just lost his farm), they offer to sell the discs for a 15% commission and give him a lift to Tyrone, so he can go and live with his daughter.

He also just happens to have a horse and they head north to discover the shop empty. Dave (Ian Toner), who has married Elvis's ex, Tracey (Leah O'Rourke), just happens to Frank's boss and he offers the lads some new premises. He also informs Sadie that her property has been condemned and that she won't be compensated for its demolition. Despite their series of lucky breaks - that includes Debbie finding Elvis in the new shop - Dermot decides to take his chances Stateside and an insert during the credit crawl shows him returning a year later clutching his first album.

With all its loose ends neatly tied, this genial romp leaves a feel-good vibe that feels closer to such Irish road movies as Anand Tucker's Leap Year (2010), Dave Minogue's Poster Boys (2021), and Emer Reynolds's Joyride (2023) than any actualities about vinyl hunters. Indeed, the rare records are something of a MacGuffin and serve only as the means for providing the various happy endings. But the action rolls along as pleasingly as the passing scenery before Sebastian Cort's camera, with Mark McCausland's jaunty score twinkling away in the background.

The idea underpinning Colin Broderick's screenplay has its roots in McCausland's past. But one can't imagine quite so many coincidences and coin flips falling down the right way in one eventful journey. Not that plausibility matters a jot, as the travellers encounter a gaggle of offbeat characters, several of whom would have been right at home on Craggy Island. All of which is a far cry from the setting of onetime playwright Michael Head's directorial debut, Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire (2024). But he wisely keeps the focus on the engaging Owen Colgan and Brenock O'Connor (who resembles George Harrison c.1974), whose chirpy chemistry consistently distracts from the scrappiness of a script that just about gets them from A to B and back again.