‘Sirens’: Thessaloniki Review

Dir/scr: Rita Baghdadi. Lebanon/US. 2022. 78 mins.

A roof-raising rock-doc with heart to match its decibels, Moroccan-American writer-director Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens admiringly chronicles the Middle East’s first (and only) all-female thrash metal band. World-premiering at Sundance in January before an international bow at Thessaloniki two months later, this audience-friendly survey of two chaotic years in the life of Beirut quintet Slave To Sirens will find plentiful festival favour in coming months. 

Baghdadi follows the indomitably free-spirited duo as they contend with parental disapproval and extra-curricular professional difficulties while seeking to make an impact beyond the confines of their conservative homeland. 

The main focus throughout is on lead-guitarist Shery and rhythm-guitarist Lilas, founder members whose professional relationship has in the past also involved intimacy of a romantic nature (thus making the film suitable for LGBTQ+ themed festivals). The fiery bond between these charismatic twentysomethings provides the creative friction that gives the band its raucous edge, even to the point of risking catastrophic break-up. 

Adopting a conventional fly-on-the-wall approach that never attempts to emulate its subjects’ pioneering radicalism, Baghdadi — co-director of North Dakota oilfield documentary My Country No More (2018) — seemingly has all-areas access to the group’s backstage and everyday lives. She follows the indomitably free-spirited duo as they contend with parental disapproval and extra-curricular professional difficulties while seeking to make an impact beyond the confines of their conservative homeland. 

A gig on a metal-oriented stage at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival in 2019 seems like a major step towards realising such goals. And even though their allocated slot turns out to be in the sparsely-attended mid-afternoon — a deflating moment worthy of Sacha Gervasi’s metal-doc classic Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) —  their professionalism, energy and skill soon attracts a respectable tally of appreciative head-bangers. 

Much more spectacular is a home-town gig a year later at a fund-raiser in the wake of Beirut’s devastating August 2020 port explosion: the women stand proudly atop the city’s Roman ruins for a televised super-group performance of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. The huge blast itself is shown just after the 50-minute mark as a showcase of Grace Zahrah’s virtuoso editing, which blends slow-motion footage of the incident with a heavy-metal crescendo soundtrack to truly shattering effect. 

This is one of two real coups de cinema which rise above the generally functional remainder, the other coming in the very final seconds as the two protagonists are seen walking, one after the other, into a lightless tunnel. It is a graceful visual metaphor for their mutual trust and their desire to plunge forward despite doubt and opposition, while also presenting an elegant variation on cinema’s long-established trope of the fade-to-black finale.