Oliver Laxe Calls Filmmaking 'a Prayer' at Thessaloniki Festival

Oscar-nominated Spanish director Oliver Laxe told the Thessaloniki Film Festival that filmmaking functions, for him, as "a prayer" — a candid admission from a filmmaker who says fragility drove him into the profession.

Speaking in conversation with programming head Yorgos Krassakopoulos, Laxe said his decision to become a director stemmed partly from self-protection. "I am a particularly fragile person, and my decision to become a director is to a great extent related with my need to protect myself," he said. "The crises we have suffered enable us to comprehend more deeply our inner world. 'Sirat' aspired to bring people faced up against death."

He was equally direct about fear. "Many times I am afraid to express what I truly have inside of me," Laxe said. "Sometimes, I end up thinking: 'You make a film that maybe no one will watch, but you can count on becoming a better person through this process.' And I take the leap."

Why 17 desert films?

The festival invited Laxe to curate the sidebar "Welcome to the Desert," a program of 17 films from the 1930s to the present, all set in the desert. The lineup includes David Lean's seven-time Oscar winner "Lawrence of Arabia," Dennis Hopper's 1969 road movie "Easy Rider," and two of Laxe's own films: the 2016 Cannes Critics' Week prizewinner "Mimosas" and his 2025 dual-Oscar-nominated "Sirat."

Laxe won Thessaloniki's Golden Alexander in 2019 with "Fire Will Come," which also took the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. He returned this year with a thesis about landscape. "The desert is like a mirror. There, you cannot escape yourself, you cannot hide. You are called to confront what you are really made of," he said. "In our everyday lives, we find ourselves in a state of constant distraction. In the desert you need to be alert, to be present, and that is one of its most enchanting elements in my view."

He tied the theme to his own life. "I am searching for love. I, too, seek a way to cross the desert. I have wounds," he said.

What does the desert do in 'Sirat'?

Laxe's fourth feature competed for the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival and was partly shot in Morocco's Sahara Desert. Variety's Jessica Kiang praised it as "a brilliantly bizarre, cult-ready vision of human psychology tested to its limits." The plot follows a father and his son searching for a daughter who vanished after attending a desert rave.

That scorched landscape is not scenery. It takes center stage in Laxe's probe of the human psyche. The director said the conviction that nature "possesses a transcendental quality" sits at the core of his cinematic worldview.

"When surrounded by nature, you sense how meaningless you are in contrast with its infinitude. As a film director, I too succumb to arrogance," he said. "We believe we have the power to change the world, and every once in a while we could use a reminder that we are not in control of everything."

He extended the thought to production itself. "Very often, while shooting, we get frustrated because things do not go as expected," Laxe said. "Months later, we rewatch the material and we come to understand that it is beautiful exactly because it is gifted with a touch of the unexpected. Life has its own way to create images, and sometimes you just need to accept it."

How Morocco changed his gaze

French-born Laxe moved to his parents' native Galicia as a boy, then spent a formative stretch in Morocco, where he filmed "Mimosas" and the 2010 docufiction "You All Are Captains." Those encounters with Islamic culture, he said, forced a reexamination of how cinema observes "the Other."

"We, as Western people, suffer from a great deal of guilt, often choosing to handle it by pointing the finger and blaming 'the Others,'" he said. "We are still amidst a de-colonization process. The best way to observe other people is by placing yourself in their position. You have to be willing to meet them, to forge a bond and accept how this encounter can transform you."

That word — transformation — leads back to his spirituality. "To me, film directing is like a prayer," Laxe said. "It is my way to celebrate life's complexity, express my gratitude for being alive and feel connected with anything occurring around me."

The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs through Nov. 15, giving audiences until then to cross Laxe's desert alongside Lean's and Hopper's.