Sirens Call, Sirens Call

In 2017 we first learned online about a subculture of people in Portland Oregon, who identified as “merfolk”. They approached their merfolk identity as a meaningful part of their daily lives, not just as a costume or performance.

After having met “Una the mermaid” in Portland for the first time—a prison psychologist and trauma advocate in her civil life—we instantly felt a strong connection. Una and her collective were exploring many of the themes we had been thinking about for our siren figure: someone who could move between worlds, combining knowledge across disciplines, and reimagining how we relate to each other, to nature, and to technology.

We worked together with Una closely and without a fixed script. Filming with a small team of four to five people mostly on 16mm, our process was collaborative and open-ended. The conversations and scenes often emerged organically, and over time, the line between real life and the fictional character of Una began to blur.

We started working on Sirens Call in 2017, thanks to a research grant by Wim Wenders that allowed us to travel across the U.S.—from LA to Portland and Miami—visiting places connected to merfolk culture and utopian ideas, like for example a historic underwater theatre in Florida and the Biosphere 2 in Arizona. A DAAD grant helped us to live in Portland part time and stay connected with the community and also engage with theorists and artists like Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Stacy Alaimo, and Dorothee Ostmeier. Right before the pandemic, we received production support from ZDF’s Kleines Fernsehspiel and partners in Germany and the Netherlands. Then after a Covid break we were able to shoot the film in four phases across the US, followed by a year and a half of editing in Cologne. So the whole project unfolded over around seven years.

Yeah, definitely. Topography has been a consistent point of departure in our work in general. In our earlier short films, we actually focused on spaces exclusively in the visual frame, exploring how certain architectures, often linked to leisure and shaped by late capitalist logics, reflect broader social and cultural dynamics. That interest carried over into Sirens Call.

What was especially interesting here was that those places which appear most fictional or sci-fi-ish in the film, are often just documentary shots of existing places in the US that we filmed along the way. Like locations such as the “breathe bar”, where breathing itself has become a commodity, or the “bluroom,” that offers UV light therapy to treat anxiety and pain, these are all existing locations you can go to as a customer. These kinds of environments for us reveal an interesting intersection of New Age practices and commodification that we found both specific for the west coast and very fitting in the context of our film.

Generally in our works, whether we’re focusing on spaces or people, there’s often this sense of something feeling off, or haunted—like shadows, memories, or unspoken desires. These things are kind of present and not present at the same time, like maybe acting in the subconscious or something. As filmmakers we’re interested in creating these “in-between” spaces—places where the viewer can explore and figure things out on their own. It’s less about telling a specific story and more about opening paths for the audience to engage with. That’s why we love film as a language.

The blend of documentary and fictional elements in Sirens Call came from our interest in the relationship between appearance, truth, and self-assertion where it’s hard to draw a clear line between them. That sense of uncertainty was something we really wanted to capture in the film. When it came to script and direction, we didn’t stick to a strict plan. The film evolved through our research and our ongoing engagement with the environment around us. For us, filmmaking is a way to explore the possibilities of utopian ideas and see how they actually play out in the real world. With a small team of no more than five people and shooting on 16mm, we kept things hands-on and collaborative. This also shaped how we worked with the protagonists which made it easier to merge the documentary and fictional elements in a natural way.

The structure of Sirens Call really took shape alongside the project. Since the siren figure touches on so many layers—myth, personal identity, politics—it felt right for the film to move between genres like sci-fi, road movie, and testimonial. That mix came pretty naturally to us.

In the making we were drawn to Kishotenketsu, a Japanese dramaturgical form that doesn’t build toward one big climax, but shifts and unfolds gradually, more like a meandering journey than a straight hero’s journey narrative that we are seeing often in mainstream cinema. We had the idea of chapters from the beginning. It helped us break things up and stay grounded as we moved between different places, voices, and moods. Each chapter became a way to pause, shift perspective, and keep the rhythm of the journey. In the edit, it became clear that we were actually working with three overlapping figures: our fictional siren “Una”, “Una the mermaid” as Gina Rønning’s own mersona, and Gina Rønning herself (Una’s human name). We didn’t try to force them into one identity but let them speak to each other in different ways. Una’s voice over is based on years of conversation, often recontextualizing Gina’s original quotes within the fictional frame of Una’s journey. We also consciously kept specific behind-the-scenes elements in the film—labs, studio moments, interviews—as we wanted to be transparent about the process and construction of this experiment.

We first encountered the community in 2017 through Una, who initially founded the “pod.” From the outset, it was clear that this was not just a group of individuals, but a collective with a strong sense of solidarity—they met regularly, engaged in political action, yet came from completely different backgrounds, each with their own motivations for engaging in the pod.

The sequence you’re referring to emerged organically from the time we spent with them, immersing ourselves in their rhythms and the ways they interacted. This process involved a series of in-depth conversations in the studio, where each person was invited to present themselves through their mersona. These conversations happened pretty early on and were really crucial in understanding how each individual navigated their identity and how these personal journeys intersected within the community.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, as we mostly start from a personal interest or experience. However, at KHM in Cologne, the art school where both of us have studied and started working together, they had a very interdisciplinary approach to filmmaking and we were fortunate to also study with incredible professors from the media and gender studies department. This probably provided a theoretical foundation rooted in post-feminist thinking and media theory, which shaped a lot of the initial questions we had for this film. While we spend a lot of time living and researching in the Pacific Northwest—Portland, in particular, we also found ourselves surrounded by the work of writers and artists whose presence in the region deeply resonated with us– such as for example the sci-fi writing of Ursula Le Guin and filmmaking of Todd Haynes and Kelly Reichardt, whose work has been a great inspiration. We were also fortunate to be introduced to performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stevens in San Francisco, whose perspectives enriched the process and who also make brief appearances as free spirits in the film. That said though, while theory gave us a starting point, we made a conscious effort to let go of it during the filming process. We sought to stay close to what the community was presenting to us, allowing their perspectives and lived experiences to guide the film. Interestingly, the theoretical concepts and the embodied realities of the community kind of intermingled in strange forms we hadn’t anticipated, weaving together naturally throughout the process.