On the outskirts of Beirut, Lilas and her thrash metal bandmates, Shery, Maya, Alma, and Tatyana (Slave to Sirens), have big dreams but few opportunities. When the band’s appearance at a UK music festival isn’t the life-changer they had hoped for, Lilas comes home to Lebanon on the brink of collapse. At the same time, the complicated relationship between Lilas and her fellow guitarist Shery starts to fracture. The future of her band, her country, and her dreams now all at stake, Lilas faces a crossroad. She must decide what kind of leader she will be, not only for her band, but also as a young woman struggling to define herself in Lebanon, a country as complex as each of the Sirens themselves.

About the filmmaker:

Rita Baghdadi is an Emmy award-winning Moroccan-American documentary filmmaker known for the intimacy of her bold, character-driven films. Rita’s latest feature documentary SIRENS premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest. The film was praised as “utterly charming” by the Hollywood Reporter and “deeply moving” by RogerEbert.com. Previous films include MY COUNTRY NO MORE, winner of Best Feature at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and CITY RISING which won the LA-area Emmy award for Best Social Issue Film. Rita’s work has been supported by Sundance, Tribeca, Netflix, HBO, Canon, Film Independent and the International Documentary Association. She is co-founder of Lady & Bird Films and is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia. When she’s not in the field, she is an active mentor dedicated to empowering women of color through documentary filmmaking.