The snow-covered Park City feels a world away from Tunis, where Amel Guellaty shot her feature debut “Where the Wind Comes From,” playing Sundance as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition strand. This real-life journey somewhat echoes that of the film’s main characters, Alyssa (Eya Bellagha) and Mehdi (Slim Baccar), who embark on an eventful road trip to make it to an artist contest that promises to be the key to leaving their home country for a life in Europe.
Speaking exclusively with Variety, the photographer-turned-filmmaker says Sundance was always her “dream” festival. “When I see the Sundance laurels on a film poster I know I am going to like the movie, so I couldn’t believe it when I got in.” The premiere has an added layer of excitement for Guellaty: this is the first time her leading actors will be seeing snow. “They are almost equally as excited about that,” she says jokingly.
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The story centers on a girl and a boy who grow up as best friends, without ever surrendering to their friends’ and families’ expectations of a romance. It first came to Guellaty years ago, before she even worked on her short films, “Black Mamba” and “Chitana.” “I really wanted to tell a story about a friendship between a boy and a girl. I felt it was such a common relationship in my life,” she says.
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“From my teen years to my early 20s, I was always surrounded by boys,” continues the director. “I developed an emotional connection with them and people just asked me: why don’t you date? Even my parents asked if my friends were my boyfriends and I just never felt it was weird. Those friends were present for me and, maybe because men don’t talk to each other that much, it felt easier to open up to a close girlfriend.”
With “Where the Wind Comes From,” Guellaty set out to represent a relationship that she had not previously “seen enough in cinema,” where you have “this intense, intimate relationship that never becomes sexual.” Another key element for the filmmaker was to honor the Tunisian youth, which she feels is one of the “most interesting in the world.”
“I love this part of life. In your 20s, you feel like you can change the world while, in your 30s, it feels more and more like there is nothing you can do. Tunisian youth is so interesting — it is rooted in Arab and Muslim cultures but also open-minded, so there is this complex opposition. They love art, they are the ones who did the revolution 10 years ago,” she says.
What saddened the director, however, is that every time she spoke to someone in their 20s, from whatever background, they all said “their dream is to leave” their home country of Tunisia. “They feel like there is no hope and they can’t create any kind of future here. It’s awful to watch a youth so full of life and at the same time so much despair.”
Still, she didn’t want her feature debut to be a “dark drama” because whenever she looked around her she saw people who were “bright and funny.” To best capture that, Guellaty decided she would make her film a comedy and play with genre elements — including sparse surrealist interludes throughout the film.
“It’s something really personal because I use my imagination to escape anxiety and stress,” she says of the inspiration for these sequences. “I have a different kind of imagination, less poetic, but I wanted this element to exist in my movie because I always felt that imagination is something everybody has, to one degree or another. It’s also another link between the two characters, their imagination, it adds another layer to their friendship.”
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This playfulness with form and narrative, Guellaty says, defies Western audiences’ expectations of what a Tunisian film looks like. “People want to see belly dancing and mosques in our movies. I was in Rome with one of my shorts and an audience member told me my movie didn’t look Tunisian. What does that even mean? What is a Tunisian movie? What is an Italian, or a French movie? That doesn’t mean anything. Certain people like orientalism and seeing women struggling and repressed. This is the cliche the world loves. I wanted to do the opposite. I have a very strong woman and a more sensitive man.”
Of the current moment in Tunisian cinema, especially following Kaouther Ben Hania’s history-making Oscar nomination last year for “Four Daughters” — becoming the first ever Arab woman to be nominated for an Oscar twice — Guellaty says she feels “immense pride.”
“There is a new wave of directors and I admire them all,” she adds. “Every year we seem to have a film in Berlin or Cannes. When I got into Sundance, I felt like I had joined them and was so proud. We are telling our stories from our point of view, straying away from Orientalist expectations. We are not making just Arab movies anymore. I’m so proud of this new generation and being a part of it.”
“Where the Wind Comes From” is produced by Atlas Vision (Tunisia) and co-produced with Haut Les Mains Productions (France). The producers are Asma Chiboub and Karim Aitouna. The co-producer is Chadi Abo. Films Boutique handles international sales.