AFA GOES Sirens سايرنز (Cinemamed Festival)

On December 7, Art For All goes to Sirens سايرنز.

In a Beirut suburb, Lilas and Shery, guitarists in the first all-female metal band “Slave to Sirens”, struggle with their tumultuous friendship, their budding sexuality and their boundless ambition to become the country’s biggest metal stars.

“In metal, it’s all about sacrifice.” On that, the five musicians of Slave To Sirens, who are nevertheless often in the contramine, agree wholeheartedly. Lebanon is reputed to be the most progressive country in the Middle East, but even there it is not easy for five women to play in a metal band. Especially not if you belong to the lgbtq+ community, like Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara. Those two guitarists in the band were once in a relationship and the break-up still reverberates. But in Sirens, director Rita Baghdadi concentrates on the band’s struggle against prejudice and especially on the passion that keeps the fire burning in the quintet. Baghdadi also has a fine eye for the bustling, noisy and demanding city that is Beirut. Partly filmed after the city’s horrific 2020 port disaster, Sirens is an ode to undaunted perseverance. 

Awarded at numerous international festivals and presented in competition at Sundance and Ad Hoc Docs.

We meet up with the group at Globe Aroma at 6pm.

Interested? Contact Amina: 0496 10 86 57 / artforall@globearoma.be

You can find more info here.