Award-winning studio NEON announced today that it has acquired North American rights to the immersive, highly original and explosive Sirât from Galician filmmaker Oliver Laxe (You All Are Captains, Mimosas, Fire Will Come). The film has been the talk of Cannes since it premiered In Competition on Thursday, May 15 with festival attendees trying not give spoilers about the film’s many surprises. Co-written by Laxe alongside frequent collaborator Santiago Fillol, the film stars Sergi López, Bruno Núñez, Stefania Gadda, and Jade Oukid. NEON is planning a North American theatrical release later this year.
Sirât follows a father (López) and his son as they arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They’re searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey forces them to confront their own limits.
Sirât is produced by Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, and Esther García under their banner El Deseo, Xavi Font and Oliver Laxe for Filmes Da Ermida, Oriol Maymó for Uri Films, Mani Mortazavi and Andrea Queralt for 4A4 Productions, and Domingo Corral for Movistar Plus+. Associate producers include Fran Araújo and Guillermo Farré for Movistar Plus+, and Holger Stern. The Match Factory is representing the international sales rights to the film.
The deal was negotiated by NEON’s Sarah Colvin with Agathe Valentin and Thania Dimitrakopoulou of The Match Factory on behalf of the filmmakers.
Oliver Laxe made his feature debut with You All Are Captains which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He went on to make religious western Mimosas which screened in the Critics’ Week section at Cannes in 2016. His third feature, Fire Will Come, screened at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard and won the Jury Prize. Known for frequently shooting on location in Morocco and utilizing non-actors in his films, he returns to those roots with Sirât.
The news comes following NEON’s recent acquisitions of critically acclaimed In Competition titles The Secret Agent from Kleber Mendonça Filho, and It Was Just An Accident from Jafar Panahi. This year in Cannes, NEON debuted Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Julia Ducournau’s Alpha in competition, Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5, and Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona which NEON also produced.
NEON is behind Sean Baker’s Anora starring Mikey Madison which recently took home five Academy Awards® including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. The film won the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, continuing NEON’s five-year streak of films winning the award, and its theatrical release opened to the highest per-screen average of 2024.
About NEON
In only eight years, NEON has garnered 39 Academy Award® nominations (7 this year), 11 total wins (5 this year), including two Best Picture wins, and has grossed over $400M at the box office. The company continues to push boundaries and take creative risks on bold cinema such as Sean Baker’s Anora, which recently took home five Academy Awards® including Best Picture, and was released in theaters to the highest per-screen average of 2024; as well as Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, which made history winning four Academy Awards®, becoming the first non-English-language film to claim Best Picture, and grossed over $54M at the domestic box office.
NEON has built an impressive streak winning the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with five consecutive wins, including Anoraand Parasite, as well as Anatomy of a Fall, Titane, and Triangle of Sadness. In 2024, NEON was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Independent Studio of the Year and received the Clio Award for Studio of the Year.
Recent NEON releases include Osgood Perkins’ horror film The Monkey which is based on the short story by Stephen King and marked NEON’s second biggest opening weekend at the box office following Perkins’ Longlegs, which is the highest grossing independent film of the year at $75 million domestically.
As a burgeoning leader in the production space, NEON’s recent and upcoming in-house productions include: David Robert Mitchell’s They Follow starring Maika Monroe; Michael Covino’s Splitsville starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona; the highly anticipated Boots Riley feature I Love Boosters starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, Demi Moore, and Eiza González; The Wrong Girls starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat; Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo starring Hunter Schafer; and Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool. NEON’s international sales outfit handles the company’s in-house titles as well as third party projects.
NEON has amassed a library of over 120 films, with a noteworthy selection of Academy Award® nominated films including: Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig; Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days; Robot Dreams from Pablo Berger; documentaries All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Fire of Love, Moonage Daydream, and Flee, which made history becoming the first film to score an impressive trifecta of Oscar® nominations; Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in The World; and Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya.
