Documentary about Female Lebanese Band Premiering at Sundance Film Festival

"Sirens," a documentary by Rita Baghdadi is Premiering in the World Cinema Documentary competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

On the outskirts of Beirut, Sirens follows the emotional journey of Lilas and Shery, co-founders and guitarists of the Middle East’s first all-female metal band, as they wrestle with friendship, sexuality and destruction in their pursuit of becoming thrash metal rock stars.

Rita Baghdadi's "Sirens" is set against a recent past and a more tumultuous political backdrop. It is, without a doubt, the most compelling portrait of a female Lebanese thrash metal band you've ever seen. But it's also a clear standout at Sundance and far more than a novelty act. In a documentary genre that can easily slide into cliché, "Sirens" exists another world. Its characters, the members of the Beirut-based Slave to Sirens, are wrestling with more extreme issues than most black-clad, tattoo-covered bands confront. For them, freedom of speech battles and LGBTQ rights blur with power chords.

It's a classic tale of band dynamics, too, focusing largely on the friendship and disagreement of Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara, the band's two guitarists. Their squabbles sometimes sound like those of any band. But in other occasions, resistance on stage and off joins in harmony. In one scene, Mayassi and Bechara meet and converse on sidewalk, only to be engulfed by a marching protest, which they casually join.

At Sundance, though, there is always buzz around music documentaries. At last year's virtual festival, Questlove's “Summer of Soul (or... The Revolution Will Not Be Televised)," which documented the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, was arguably the festival's biggest breakout hit. This year's Sundance, which is also happening virtually and runs through Sunday, abounds in music documentaries. Among this year's crop is the first film of a three-part Netflix documentary on Ye (formerly Kanye West), “jeen-yuhs," and the Sinéad O'Connor doc “Nothing Compares.”

The films differ widely in subject and style but they each resurrect a musical past that feels very distant from our present.