If When Harry Met Sally is to believed, it’s impossible for a man and a woman to have a pure friendship without romantic feelings coming into it. Amel Guellaty‘s charming debut feature presents the opposite viewpoint. A road movie down the coast of Tunisia Where the Wind Comes From presents a concrete platonic bond between two young dreamers. It follows the standard road movie template, but features beautifully realised characters and is full of lovely surreal touches.

Alyssa and Mehdi (Eya Bellagha and Slim Baccar) are very different in temperament but have been best friends since childhood. Alyssa is spontaneous and mercurial, often frustrating to be around. Mehdi is more introverted, a sensitive soul and talented artist. Both feel constrained by their life in the outskirts of Tunis, but an art competition in Djerba in the South East would offer a scholarship to a school in Berlin an a potential escape route. Unable to find travel due to a strike, Alyssa ‘borrows’ a truck from a friend and the two set off on their adventure.

Where the Wind Comes From is very much rooted in the easy chemistry but it’s two leads. Bellagha and Baccar share rapid-fire dialogue that feels lived in. The two actors complement each other beautifully. Previously a stunt performer, Bellagha brings an unpredictable physicality and no little charisma to Alyssa. Baccar does phenomenally well not to be overshadowed by his whirlwind of a co-star. There’s a slight tinge of weariness to the deep love Mehdi has for his friend, and an unspoken lifetime of scrapes and spills that Mehdi carries with him. This is exemplified by that fact that though it’s his talent that’s set the adventure in motion, it’s Alyssa who has been the catalyst for the trip. This complicated but loving central relationship goes a long way to overcoming the familiarity of the road movie templates.

The unfamiliar backdrop of Tunisia is another aspect that helps the film’s identity. Guellaty and cinematographer Frida Marzouk present a rich and often gorgeous country that, while with the customs (and what its protagonists would view as the restrictions) of an Arabic country, is a mix of the modern and traditional. The pair visit the ancient Roman-Berber settlement of Uthina, stop in remote villages, and dance the night away in a high-end nightclub. It has a slight feel of Y tu mamá también about the offbeat journey.

Throughout, Guellaty weaves little moments of surreal flights of fancy to convey the pair’s status as inveterate dreamers. The classic ‘arm out the window’ moment of a thousand films is embellished with animated vines snaking around Alyssa’s arm, and a flirtatious moment with a girl she takes a fancy to at the club is punctuated by them levitating off the dancefloor. They aren’t a dominant part of the narrative, but they’re another way of expanding the bond between the characters visually.

It has to be said that, unlike it protagonists, Where the Wind Comes From doesn’t beat too strongly against the constraints of its genre template. It has the staccato pacing dictated by being essentially a series of one-off encounters. It has the bonds of friendship being tested, and the journey being more important than the destination.

While it doesn’t subvert expectations, it is a strong, characterful debut with a neat visual eye and a knack for characters who may get themselves into the odd outlandish encounters, but which have an emotional truth.

Screening as part of Sundance Film Festival 2025