‘Sirens Call’ Review: A Radical Film Combining Merfolk Mythology and Political Documentary

variety.com:

Siddhant Adlakha A work whose hybrid form is rooted in a hybrid protagonist — a human who was once a merwoman, but now walks the earth — Miri Ian Gossing and Lina Sieckmann’s feature debut “Sirens Call” is politically and artistically radical.

Like its subject, the part-fiction, part-documentary feature defies easy categorization, living somewhere in the overlap between science fiction, American road-trip travelogue and “Koyaanisqatsi” by way of folklore.

The film yields aesthetic and narrative rug-pulls that are at once completely surprising and yet make perfect sense when their pieces fall into place, gently revealing shattering truths viewers might feel they’ve always known, deep in their bones.

This cinematic sleight of hand creates a dynamic approach to human bodies in the realm of disability and gender dysphoria — first as fantasy metaphor, then as direct political confrontation.