Presented in the World Cinema Documentary Competition of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens chronicles the struggles of an all-female metal band amidst Lebanon’s chaos.
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is in full swing (20-30 January 2022), and as usual, we are excited to attend the festival as press and share with you our impressions and content related to the films showcased at this year’s Sundance. Among the titles we have been lucky to discover is Sirens, directed by Emmy-Award Winner Rita Baghdadi and composed by Para One, which will receive its World Premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
The premise of the film stands strong and temptingly inviting. Many different ingredients are introduced in a very efficient introduction which gives us an overview of the film’s context: an all-female metal band revolving around two magnetic young girls promoting progressist ideas such as LGBT rights, against a backdrop of social and political tension in Beirut. The film seems to outline its goal from the outset: how can a band of idealist young women thrive amidst an oppressive society, an economic turmoil, and a political instability? In other words, how to be idealist and utopian in a “fucked up country”, as one of the characters puts it?
What comes to the fore in Sirens is the admiration and love of the director for her characters. She introduces us to Lilas and Sherry, two magnetic young women who are the backbone of Lebanese metal band “Slave to Sirens”. Through intimate scenes of dialogue, music rehearsals, and voice over excerpts, director Rita Baghdadi portrays smolderingly fascinating characters who stand out by their mix of radicality, electricity, sensitivity, and vulnerability. The director’s tantalizing and charming visuals make us join forces with the characters, to the point that one quickly empathizes with their fight for a more progressive society, especially when it comes to LGBT rights. The film is clearly the work of someone who has won the trust of her characters and understands perfectly what is at stake for them. In front of Rita Baghdadi’s camera, we witness the beautiful chemistry between two strong young women who turn out to be unusual Arab female characters. As mentioned in her official statement, Rita Baghdadi envisioned a film “where Arab women could be the stars of their own story, […] where they could curse, scream, thrash and talk openly about sexuality without being sexualized”, in order to “challenge Western expectations of what it’s like being a young woman in the Middle East today.” Invigorating montages of performances alternate with scenes infused with doubts and questioning, portraying the complexity of the life and fight of the characters.
What’s more, as the film unfolds, one notices a unique, moving and charming tone to the film. Indeed, Sirens has a very particular taste: we feel a mix of energy and fatality at the same time, because the director manages to be simultaneously in awe of her characters and the beauty of their aspirations but also well aware of the ongoing chaos unfolding in the background. That the band gets canceled by the organizers of a show because of their revendications, or that someone close from the band tells them explicitly that “[their] style is not supported here” and that “if [they] were a pop band, [they]’d be famous”, brings about an element of fatality. Despite the characters’ strength, efforts, and sacrifice, it feels like their ideal will always be out of reach. And the film does well in conveying this complex situation. The beguiling and absorbing soundscapes, created by French artist Para One (Jean-Baptiste de Laubier), are to be credited too in this regard, insofar as they bring both beauty and melancholia to the girls’ story. From time to time, the characters seem despondent, and the film successfully captures and portrays this complex feeling.
Over the course of the film, when the band experiences internal tensions, director Rita Baghdadi takes the opportunity to establish an explicit parallel with the tense social and political context of Lebanon. Several arresting scenes plunge us into the hell of the demonstrations asking for major changes on behalf of the country’s government. The increasing tension within the band mirrors the country’s progressive explosion.
Yet curiously, the film does not explore much the relationship between the band’s quest and the country’s context. The film settles for showing repetitive quick shots of demonstrations and chaos on the streets without digging deeper, and this is where I got a little bit frustrated by a lack of substance.
What starts as the chronicle of the struggles of a metal band with a message on where society should head, amidst a country in total chaos, slowly evolves into the chronicle of a friendship story between the band’s main characters, leaving aside the band’s quest and original fight. Unlike A Song Called Hate (2021) which followed and analyzed the various impacts of Icelandic metal band Hatari’s revendications against the settlements in the Palestinian territories meanwhile they were supposed to perform at the Eurovision contest in Tel Aviv in 2019, Sirens does not choose to follow the evolution of the band it focuses on and its agenda. As such, one will be surprised to discover, as the end credits start to roll, that the band finally gets to perform at major shows, just like it performed live on the national TV without providing us with almost any information about what seemed impossible or extremely complex at first, given the rejection the band faced in the beginning.
Overall, Sirens manages to portray two remarkable complex characters, but is less convincing when chronicling the band’s rise and fight against an ingrained mentality they are on a mission to challenge.
Grade: 3/5.
