“Where the Wind Comes From” Review: Amel Guellaty’s Coming-of-Age Drama is Tender and Confrontational

Amel Guellaty’s debut feature-length Where the Wind Comes From screened at the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the just ended Sundance Film Festival. The film, one of the scanty African films selected and Tunisian’s sole selection at the festival, subtly directs our gaze to the ongoing political tension and tragedy in Tunisia and, by extension, Africa. Quite similar in tone to Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhaj, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed and Phil Cox’s documentary, Khartoum, which screened at the World Cinema Documentary Competition, Guellaty’s feature film is made, partly, in response to the ongoing political atmosphere of her country, Tunisia. In Tunisia, an unprecedented political, social, and economic crisis bedeviling Tunisians. Amidst this indescribable horror, what has also been recurring is the towering energy of the young population in resisting these tense crises and resilience in curating a future for themselves and society. And, here lies the entry point of Guellaty’s coming-of-age drama. 

Revolving around the story of 19-year-old Alyssa (Eya Bellagha) and 23-year-old Mehdi (Slim Baccar), this bildungsroman filters through their daily realities and individual responses to societal demands and expectations. Written by Guellaty, Alyssa’s character is a fiercely rebellious young lady who has deep-rooted scorn against societal expectations of what a woman should be: a doll, carer, timid, silent. Childhood friends Alyssa and Mehdi are each other’s support system. When Alyssa isn’t acting as Mehdi’s muse for his artworks, she is encouraging him to choose himself over the demands of his family. As the more introspective and calculating of the duo, Medhi finds a way to encourage Alyssa. Frustrated by the economic limitations of their society, they dream of escape. That escape will come in the form of an art competition with an attractive prize. 

It’s on their journey to this art competition that the film will reveal more about Mehdi and Alyssa. Through their dialogues and actions, their temperament and ideological leaning gradually unfurls. Medhi is presented as the archetypal obedient young person who absorbs overwhelming societal expectations and demands. Despite his decade-long interest in art, he studied a science-related course to honor his family’s expectations. Rather than make demands when the registration for his business gets stalled due to bureaucratic negligence, he shuffles away in defeat. Alyssa, on the other hand, doesn’t take no for an answer. She constantly questions received and conventional knowledge; she is a nonconformist. 

Eya and Slim’s performance skillfully wears this temperamental contrast. To further accentuate this contrast, the film makes a significant stylistic choice: clothing Alyssa, in red and Medhi in blue. This clothing choice metaphorically captures the characters’ political leaning and tendencies. Medhi’s blue clothing represents his restraint, numbness, and acceptance of the status quo. His lethargic mien is indicative of a supposedly neutral or politically clueless citizen who doesn’t defy conventional norms and structures even when they impede on his personal and career path. As expected, Alyssa contrasts this. Not only does she ask questions, but her actions in the film are littered with protest rhetoric. Rather than embrace the caretaker role (with her mother sick and a dependent sister), she decides to fashion a new identity for herself. Rather than get swayed by the enormity of her challenges that bleed into the national Tunisian crisis, she runs to music and her imagination which paints surreal images and characters. Steeped in grounded political acts (defiance of the patriarchy, male gaze, oil companies’ degradation of the earth, the faux nature of social media lifestyle), her actions aren’t the recalcitrant attitude of a growing teenager. But of someone with a clear political understanding. 

To avoid monotony and achieve a coming-of-age feel, the director distills Alyssa’s political mien with a tender and emotional exuberance. Despite her rejection of socially-assigned womanly duties, she cares about her sick mother, and dependent sister and longs for her dead father for emotional support. Even if the film temporarily lingers on these aspects of her personality, we catch a sense of her roundness as a growing human learning their place in a dysfunctional world. 

Shot by Frida Marzouk, the camera direction is deeply observatory. In a non-statement-making manner, Marzouk’s camera captures the ruin on Tunisian streets, the political graffiti lining the street walls and the daily routine of people trying to live their lives despite the tense situation in their country. The cinematography captures the ironic coexistence of peace and chaos, poverty and affluence, confinement and independence. It’s also a visceral and vivid display of specific spaces in Tunisia that carries cultural and archeological relevance to the Tunisian people….

Guellaty’s Where the Winds Come From is an artist’s response to the historical and political climate she finds herself in. It’s an inescapable responsibility of the artist to reflect the ties and the director comically does this. Thus, other than adopting the passionate political scrutiny of Ousane Sembene and Tunde Kelani’s works, the director chooses to glide through these political topics without dousing their political substance. Medhi’s artwork represents Alyssa, himself, and a whole generation of Tunisian and, by extension African youth, who dare to dream.