Where the Wind Comes From

Director Amel Guellaty delivers, with her feature debut, a fresh, vibrant, and moving road movie that has both heart and style. Nineteen-year-old Alyssa lives in a remote town in Tunisia where little ever happens, and she is hopelessly bored. She is desperately searching for something more. The ordinariness of her life crushes her fiery spirit, and everyone around her can sense her listlessness. When an amazing opportunity arises to live and work in Europe, Alyssa asks her childhood best friend, Medhi, to join her on a journey from Tunis to Djerba. He is the dreamer with artistic talent; she is the hustler with a fierce drive to succeed. But their friendship is put to the test, as dangers along the road bring past traumas back to the surface. What follows is a journey filled with hope, unrest, challenge, and self-discovery.

Where the Wind Comes From is a feel-good film about friendship, drenched in warm shades of yellow, red, and especially blue. Alyssa and Medhi both have dreams that don’t align. Despite their struggles, they complement each other well: one is the brake (the overthinker), the other the accelerator (the naïve one). It is a film that is both fresh and gripping, playful and serious, visually striking and emotionally resonant. With a healthy dose of humor, it shows that dreams don’t have to be naïve—and are sometimes even essential for survival. Moreover, the film is beautifully rooted in the social context of a young generation of Tunisians with different expectations of society, without becoming moralistic, but instead offering compassion and tenderness.