Slave to Sirens: Lebanon’s First All-Female Thrash-Metal Band

Though much of Sirens ultimately focuses on guitarist Lilas Mayassi’s coming out, and how that inadvertently creates turmoil with her bandmates, Baghdadi’s deft filmmaking simultaneously captures just how challenging it is for a band like Slave to Sirens to even exist in the Middle East, much less grab the proverbial brass ring. Aside from the familiar struggles one might encounter in pursuit of a music career (or any artistic endeavor, for that matter), Slave to Sirens finds themselves face-to-face with cultural dogma, political protests, regional unrest, catastrophic disasters, and limited opportunities. The film is a metaphorical back-and-forth between the band’s own struggles and societal dysfunction writ large, but the magnitude of their quest is perhaps best amplified when Bechara’s father, Roger, tells her that less than one percent of the population in the Middle East listens to metal. You could make the argument that heavy metal is a fairly marginalized musical genre in the United States, but in the Middle East, a queer, all-female thrash-metal band is literally an against-all-odds gambit.