CIFF 2025 Reviews: Sirât, La Grazia
Below are capsule reviews of two films from the International Competition category at the 2025 Chicago International Film Festival. Both films won prizes at this year’s festival.
Oliver Laxe’s Sirât is a movie that begins as one movie and then slowly becomes another one as it goes on, taking us on a twisted, pulsating journey through an endless desert.
Sirât opens at a rave taking place in the middle of the desert and mountains of Morocco. Through the crowd of dancing and pulse-pounding music, Luis (Sergi Lopez) and his son Esteban (Bruno Nunez) are asking ravers if they have seen Luis’s daughter, who has been missing for eight months, but they got word she might be at this rave. With seemingly no luck, Luis and Esteban tag along with a group of ravers en route to their next rave. Their journey becomes complicated and dangerous as they cross a dangerous mountain.
What starts as a father-son journey to find their daughter/sister turns into a nightmare in the desert with no end in sight. Sirât features two of the biggest “holy shit” shocks I have seen in a film this year and possibly the last few years. The first shock is when the film takes its major turn, transitioning us from an epic search into something more terrifying. It is emotionally devastating and jaw-dropping. The second shocking moment is an explosive moment that firmly cements us into this hellscape. It’s a bold twist in the film that few filmmakers could make while also keeping us captivated in what is happening with the story, but Laxe does so brilliantly.
Sirât is a fascinating film, though one that didn’t click fully with me emotionally. While immaculately made with a banging soundtrack and spectacular sound design, Sirât’s turn into an existential journey about the triumphs and tragedies of life is fascinating, but it didn’t leave an emotional mark on me.
Paulo Sorrentino makes good-looking movies. His films are immaculately constructed, with every object in the frame precisely placed, every costume choice perfect, and every camera angle the correct one. He doesn’t do a lot of camera tricks or “fancy” shots, but in every one of his films, there are always a few shots that look like they could be paintings.
This is true about Sorrentino’s newest film, La Grazia, a film that looks at Italian President Mariano De Santis’ (Toni Servillo) final months in office. De Santis, still not over the death of his wife, has two major decisions to make before he leaves office. The first is deciding whether to sign a controversial euthanasia bill. The second is deciding on a couple of pardons for two people in prison for murder. De Santis, an empathetic man who tries to keep his emotions in check as much as possible, struggles with these decisions, as well as struggling with the realization that his term is coming to an end. What will his life be like after he leaves office?
While the general concept of the film is interesting, and it boasts a beautiful visual palette, La Grazia is overlong and lacks excitement. Despite great work from Servillo, the film contains many drawn-out, quiet moments, and there is hardly any suspense surrounding the bill signing and pardons, which felt like they should have been a more significant part of the film. Sorrentino sprinkles in moments of De Santis learning to love Italian hip hop, though those scenes don’t amount to much, and he uses a base-bumping score, which did a good job of taking me out of the daze the film put me in.
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