We grew up in the same rural small town in Germany in the early 90s. A skatepark, a gas station, a church, a supermarket, acres of woods and corn fields and the last bus running at 7pm – ever since, the boredom that came with it has sparked our imagination. The TV felt like a window to another world where magical things could happen; the series and films we were binging on presented the US as a promised land of pop culture and myth. We grew up with tales of American suburbia, Disney-like leisure architecture, the ghosts of horror movies and prom nights. Our ambivalent fascination for showtime moments and shiny surfaces, and the broken dreams behind them, grew steadily.
In 2017, we learned online about a subculture of people in Portland, Oregon, who identified as mer-folk. They claimed to not only dress up as sirens in silicone tails, but really to experience being sirens as an identity in their everyday life. After first meeting ‘Una the mermaid’ in Portland – a prison psychologist and trauma advocate in her everyday life – we instantly felt a very special connection. Una and her collective had long been incorporating the things we had envisioned for our figure: a siren with interdisciplinary wisdom, connecting human, nature and machine while trying to form new ways of being with each other and the world.
“We're all playing a character in a script, but very few of us get to write their own story.” In the case of the main character of SIRENS CALL, Una, the story is no longer about female self-sacrifice or the romantic fulfilling of the conventional mermaid narratives we know. In our film, Una is dealing with sheer survival as a hybrid being in a fragmented world on the brink of collapse. Her human body is dysfunctional; breathing on land becomes increasingly difficult. “I was drying out from the inside”: a present day mermaid figure acting as a seismograph for the future state of the human condition.
The film, like its characters, embodies a hybrid nature, roaming between documentary and fiction, situational insights and narrative exploration.
With SIRENS CALL, the notion that film can serve as a form of playful experimentation has been integral to us from the outset. From the opening scene, which presents a laboratory setting, to the studio environment and our open interview questions to Una, in this film, we strive to reveal the conditions of the production itself. In this way, SIRENS CALL, like its characters, embodies a hybrid nature, roaming between documentary and fiction, situational insights and narrative exploration. Consequently, we chose to move away from classical dramatic structure and focus on a fluid style inspired by Japanese kishotenketsu, where there are no definitive climaxes, but, much like waves, a more fluid narrative style.
Una invites us on a journey across the United States, from the radiant megacities of the Mojave Desert to the small-town swamps of Florida. The water beings they encounter have turned into Disney-esque caricatures of themselves – trapped behind thick glass walls, exposed to the greedy gazes of the crowd, moving from peepshow to freak show. As a restless being without a biography, Una wanders through a world that has become alienating, one where the very act of breathing has turned into a commodity: welcome to the BREATHE Bar.
Una’s existence is liminal – they are neither fully fish nor fully human, neither woman nor man, but something else that lies in between. Their journey is one of resistance, survival, and constant transformation, reflecting in various ways the transformative processes we must undergo as individuals and as a society to survive in a post-human world.
It is only when Una meets Moth, a non-binary teenager, during a night-time encounter in a Walmart parking lot, that their fate begins to change. Together, they embark on a quest to find a community of other mer-folk in Portland.
Here, the film’s style gradually shifts towards documentary. We meet other queer oceanic beings who politically organise, swim, celebrate and lead their everyday lives. For a time, Una seems to have found their place. Yet, the question of who they are in this world soon catches up with them. Where does their body originate from and can they possibly overcome it? Are their supposed biography and trauma a fixed narrative or can they embrace their trans identity?
The duality of fascination and doubt reflects our curiosity about the relationship between appearance, truth and (self-)assertion.
Our films often explore themes of longing, constructed feelings, and the surfaces that influence our desires – both in private and political contexts. We focus on the magic that lies between illusion and reality, capturing the ‘not-quite-achieved’, the slightly deviant. It is these specific motifs that we continually explore in our work – themes that find us: the house, the village, the nuclear family, biography, romantic relationships, representations of the everyday and the architectures of desire. Often, these motifs seem haunted by something or someone. Something that quietly announces itself, appears and then disappears, yet always remains intangible. The same is true in SIRENS CALL.
The duality of fascination and doubt reflects our curiosity about the relationship between appearance, truth and (self-)assertion. The boundaries between alternative lifestyles, holistic spiritual values and neoliberal self-improvement efforts are fluid here since nobody really seems to manage to escape these confines.
For us, filmmaking provides the ideal medium to question possible utopias and allows us to explore these ideas throughout the research and shooting process. Created by a small crew of no more than five people and filmed on Super 16, SIRENS CALL, as a collaborative process, also challenges our hierarchies, production processes and interactions with the protagonists.
Ultimately, the film is not just 121 minutes on screen, but also represents a seven-year artistic journey – a tapestry of encounters, relationships and experiences that have shaped us during this time and transformed us in multiple ways. In that way, Una’s quest is also our own quest.
An act of desire, wish fulfilment, and resistance at once.
Miri Ian Gossing, Lina Sieckmann
