Let Me See Your Head Bang
A review of Rita Baghdadi’s ‘Sirens’
A quick note before the review:
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Now, the review…
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰
Romance ✰✰½
Sex ✰✰
Storytelling ✰✰✰✰✰
Performance ✰✰✰✰✰
Yearning ✰✰✰✰✰
Special thanks to Oscilloscope Laboratories for providing The Yearning with a press screener of Sirens for this review. Watch the trailer here.
Written by Ali Romig
Watching Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens made me want to scream. And not whimper-scream, or groan in exasperation, or even fake-scream into my pillow, but rip-through-my-body, hands-thrown-back, guttural scream. Please don’t let this discourage you from seeing it—I mean it as a ringing endorsement of a film so wholly lived-in, with subjects depicting such overwhelmingly raw vulnerability, that I felt genuinely and cathartically stirred up.
Baghdadi’s documentary follows the Middle East’s first all-female thrash metal band, Beruit-based Slave to Sirens. At the center of the band—and the film—is headstrong twenty-three year old Lilas Mayassi, a flawed but endearing leader. Lilas lives with her traditional mother and younger brother on the outskirts of Beirut, teaching music to kids by day and struggling to make it as a musician by night. Along with Lilas is the band’s co-founder and enigmatic lead guitarist Shery Bechara, and their bandmates: vocalist Maya Khairallah, bassist Alma Doumani, and drummer Tatyana Boughaba. In one of the opening shots, we see footage of the women performing—all clad in black heavy clothing, make up smeared artfully, and hair wild. After asking the crowd if they’re “fucking ready,” their first song kicks off with an earth shattering scream, one that feels both surprising and entirely warranted.
Slave to Sirens have big aspirations, but few opportunities—in fact, throughout the movie they are told that in the Middle East they are part of the “1% of people who like thrash metal” and that they would have more success as a pop band (a suggestion that is met each time with increasing annoyance). Despite this uphill battle, I found it interesting that the Sirens never seemed to revel in their accomplishments for too long, choosing instead to ask “what’s next?” When a major music magazine writes about them, they haven’t even finished reading the article before they are back to rehearsing.
Eventually, the Sirens get invited to the U.K. to play Glastonbury, the world’s largest music festival. But when the show isn’t the breakthrough they were expecting (“What matters is that we were happy on that stage,” one member offers tentatively, after the show), they return home fractured. As the political revolution takes a turn in Beirut, Lilas begins taking her frustrations out on the band, specifically Shery. Through a few stilted confessionals, it is revealed that the two share a hushed past and a complicated friendship, which suffers more for the escalating tension as the band fails to grow.
As Sirens’ central figure, Lilas is incredibly compelling, sharing so much of herself—even the less-than-flattering bits—in order to more fully connect with the film’s audience. Despite unfolding against a backdrop of political unrest—more specifically Lebanon's 2019 revolution—the film expertly zeroes in on a personal slice-of-life narrative. Lilas is a young woman who feels, at twenty-three, that she is not where she wants to be in life. She has an obvious and visceral distaste for society's expectations; she desperately wants to define success on her own terms. But sometimes her need to protect her hard-won sense of self from outside judgment or influence leaves her isolated. Lilas’ protective exterior is especially apparent when it comes to her relationship with Shery.
Early on in the film, we come to understand that Shery is the person who knows Lilas the best—this is due in part both to their past secret “situationship” and their nourishing musical and artistic connection. But there is also a twinge of competitiveness present in their relationship, and something else too–maybe jealousy? As Lilas comes to terms with her own queerness, she pushes Shery away, choosing instead to lose herself in a long distance flirtation with a girl from Syria—a relationship that Lilas herself describes as a “fantasy.” Many queer viewers will be able to recognize themselves in Lilas’ messy, compartmentalizing self-discovery, which in many ways also reads as necessary self-preservation. Sometimes it’s easier to imagine a new life for yourself, rather than to try and make your old one fit around a changing you. That said, while many of the themes in Sirens are universal, the specificity of the film’s subject matter shouldn’t be overlooked. So much of the storytelling revolves around what it’s like to be queer in Lebanon. From watching her navigate queer bars with a mixture of giddiness and trepidation, to the ways she must orchestrate an elaborate production just to spend the weekend with her girlfriend, Lilas’ experience, while recognizable, is undeniably informed by a layer of context unique to her environment—an environment in which being openly queer is still punishable by law.
As Lilas continues to retreat from her family and friends, Shery can’t understand why she’s being cast aside—after all, she loves Lilas for exactly who she is. The question of how to go from best friends, to lovers, to exes, and remain in community with one another is extremely worthwhile subject matter for any queer film (c’mon, who among us can honestly say they haven’t grappled with the same problem?). In many ways, Shery is the free-spirit of the group, which makes Lilas’ reservedness even harder for her to understand. When Shery finally confronts Lilas, making a decision that will change the dynamic of Slave to Sirens forever, Lilas can only manage to tell her to “keep personal shit out of the band.”
This is a huge theme throughout the film—the attempted separation of the personal and professional, or personal and political. And while the film’s subject may want to keep “personal shit” out of her art, the filmmaker herself seems to want to do the exact opposite. Rita Baghdadi (My Country No More) was inspired to make Sirens in part due to her own experiences growing up as an Arab-American in a post-9/11 America. She was profoundly affected by the way Arab people and the entire Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region were represented on screen in the West—as if it were “enemy territory.” During press for Sirens, she said, “I knew that the best way to challenge Western expectations of what it’s like to be a young woman growing up in the Middle East today was simply to feature [Lilas] like everyone else: human, full of dreams, and fueled by desire.”
This focus on the personal is what makes Sirens such a successful and engrossing documentary. But, of course, just as Lilas cannot really keep her personal life from touching the band, Baghdadi would not be able to as clearly capture Lilas’ story without delving into the political climate surrounding her. With the exception of one scene featuring the Port of Beirut explosion, which I felt prioritized shock-value over substance, she manages to do so with a deft touch, incorporating political commentary in subtle ways—a news program playing in the background of choice scenes, or a gradually growing protest drowning out an otherwise everyday moment. Baghdadi mostly chooses to forgo extraneous context. Instead, she takes an entire revolution and filters it through the eyes of young women who are, despite increasing hardship, fighting to make music—to be heard. In doing so, she portrays a nuanced, dimensional, culturally diverse, and deeply divided country, rather than a one-noted blanket of oppression.
A detail I found particularly poignant was the inclusion of the banning of Mashrou’ Leila, an extremely popular Lebanese music group. In 2019, they were banned from performing in the country because of their openly gay members. As Lilas watches this news unfold on television, sitting next to her mother, who loves her even though she can’t understand her, I could feel the anxiety pulsating through the screen. She fidgets, bites her nails, rolls her eyes. We see her both struggle to absorb this news and continue on in spite of it. This scene captured the all-too-familiar experience of navigating and honoring your queerness in an environment that fervently denies it.
Despite these heavier moments, Sirens does a brilliant job of highlighting spontaneous instances of giddy, silly sisterhood. In many ways, this film is a repudiation of stereotypes. The classic image of a thrash metal rocker is often hypermasculine and overly-cynical. In contrast, Lilas, Shery, Maya, Alma, and Tatyana are so often playful. On stage, they are all rage and release—banging their heads and producing almost otherworldly sounds that you feel in your bones. But offstage, they are soft in numerous and surprising ways. They Hail Satan while giggling uncontrollably and pick delicate pink flowers in their leather harnesses. The movie is careful to showcase the sides of people, places, or experiences that often go undiscussed or are overlooked in favor of the sensational; whether it be a gentle rocker, wildflowers that grow amongst ruins, or the joy and community you can find solace in during an otherwise scary time. One moment that really stuck with me was the story of how Lilas and Shery first met. It was during a protest: Shery turned to Lilas in the middle of chanting and asked her, “So, what do you listen to?” To me, this is the most concise, eloquent way of illustrating how a community of safety can be built amidst chaos. Sirens is at its strongest and most compelling when all five women are together, reveling in their shared passion and knowledge.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the film’s score, for two reasons: 1) this is a music documentary, so it’s kind of required; and 2) the score was composed by Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, aka Para One, aka the man behind the soundtrack to Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire.1 Para One is known for incorporating dissonance into his scores. At times, this overwhelming wall of sound can highlight the unyielding pressure that comes with living under the weight of other people’s expectations or rules. But every once in a while, the dissonance gives way to softer tones—creating moments of unexpected lightness and peace. The result is a soundtrack that effectively conveys both desolation and hope.
Sirens is a film about community. About falling in and out of love for the first time. About trying to be understood by your family. About trying to understand yourself. It’s a film about hope—for your own future, and for your country’s. But at its heart, Sirens is a film about one woman’s world, and I felt lucky to be invited into it.
Sirens is playing in select theaters across the country. You can check here for showings near you.
Spoiler alert! Next week on The Yearning, Meg will review Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert.
How many reviews can we sneak mentions of this movie into? Current count is 3.