Amel Guellaty: I Bet on the Audience & Address Their Intellects & Senses Through Images Rather Than Words

Amel Guellaty’s work has garnered key recognition at prestigious international festivals, including Sundance, Stockholm, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Her film ‘Black Mamba’ has screened at over 60 festivals, winning approximately 20 international awards, solidifying her status as a leading emerging voice in contemporary Arab cinema.

Her film ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’ received the ‘Golden Bee’ award for Best Feature Film at the Malta Film Festival and the Best Arab Feature Film award at the El Gouna Film Festival in December 2025.

Moreover, it won the Best Screenplay Award, the Audience Award, and the Freedom of Expression Award from the Tunisian National Journalists Syndicate at the Carthage Film Festival, highlighting its artistic and social significance.

Amel Guellaty is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer who has created videos for Dior Middle East and directed documentaries for various magazines like the French ‘Elle.’

Interview by: Mounia Kouach

She embodies a new generation of Tunisian and Arab filmmakers, reflecting societal change and a pursuit of freedom, utilising cinema to explore evolving identities.

She began her film journey via photography, creating a visual language that integrates imagery, sound, and text to express her reality and artistic view. Her contemporary cinematic style promotes audience reflection, questioning, and dialogue, encouraging personal interpretation over providing direct answers.

Amel Guellaty skillfully intertwines fantasy and reality, employing symbolic and surreal visuals to portray characters’ emotions and mental states. The work combines drama and comedy, tackling human and social issues imbued with tension and anxiety, while humour creates an engaging, lighthearted environment for the audience.

She tackles young people’s anxieties about the future, desires for escape and emigration, and the theme of pure friendship, separate from romantic love. Her films redefine women’s roles as strong individuals facing social conflicts, fostering transcultural dialogue.

She highlights that a director’s success hinges on balancing artistic freedom with practical constraints, emphasising the importance of precision and collaboration with the team and subject matter experts.

You are a photographer and a filmmaker, to start. Which is more indicative of your talent and closer to your heart?

My childhood love of movies helped me fulfil my dreams of becoming a filmmaker and eventually brought me success. My initial love and the medium that helped me transfer effortlessly into directing and strengthen my ability to overcome obstacles was photography.

I don’t dispute its benefits to my cinematic life; it gave me autonomy and liberty and enabled me to confidently and easily navigate the many facets of the film business. It’s also how I make a living. A filmmaker cannot support themselves in a non-industrialised nation like Tunisia.

Additionally, I worked as an assistant director to obtain personal filmmaking experience and to learn about various production approaches by being on set. This was a worthwhile and fruitful experience that, quite rightly, brought me into the field of directing when I had a lot of tales that I was ready to tell using my own voice and creative approach.

In what ways did your interactions with foreign filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas impact your vision for film?

I was lucky enough to work with excellent directors who are always teaching us and whose counsel we need. My interactions with them taught me that management and action are just as important to filmmaking as creativity and inspiration; rigorous discipline, open communication, adaptability, and mutual trust are all necessary. Finding a steady balance between creative freedom and pragmatic limitations is every director’s ultimate goal.

Until new ideas came to me and I developed my own distinct style of filmmaking, I followed their lead in overseeing the film set, allocating responsibilities, establishing priorities, sticking to the schedule, working under time pressure, preserving teamwork, and remaining composed.

Your films address women’s issues. Are you a feminist committed to women’s issues, or is it a cinematic and artistic choice?

My own beliefs and my strong conviction that women are still oppressed and abused worldwide have influenced my decision to include women in all of my films. Because I work as a filmmaker, I have the opportunity to assist debunk falsehoods and present the reality.

In my films, I’ve explored women’s difficulties via their daily lives, which are influenced by family demands and social restraints, as well as from a personal standpoint. I believe that women have never been portrayed as weak animals; they are human beings with both strengths and faults. The subservient lady does not represent me. As a result, in my films, I’ve portrayed her as resilient, rebellious, defending her rights, and sticking to her decisions.

In the movie “Shaitana,” for instance, I discussed the educational policies that forbid girls from going to public areas under the guise of safeguarding and protecting them, while permitting boys to move around, explore, and make use of outdoor areas.

The movie challenged the rationale behind this exclusion by showing that learning requires exposure to both positive and negative circumstances, irrespective of whether a boy or a girl is participating.

In ‘Black Mamba,’ the protagonist was a strong, athletic girl who fought in the boxing ring and in her family, defying their rules and declining to wed a guy her mother had picked for her.

In ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’ the protagonist, in contrast to the male lead, was a strong, independent, and bright young woman who faced and overcame hardship.

Did your personal life serve as an inspiration for your characters and movie plots?

My environment, my friends, my family, and the things that baffle and make me wonder are always my sources of inspiration. To ensure that I accurately and transparently depict the experience on television, I also consult with professionals and those who are purported to have lived it.

For instance, I created a brief documentary about the role of youth before beginning my feature ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’ which deals with youth. Young people from all neighbourhoods and educational backgrounds shared their worries, opinions, and aspirations with me throughout our lengthy conversations.

The outcome is a film that reflects my own distinct imprint and cinematic identity, touching on their reality, expressing their concerns, and brimming with my compassion and my wish to see them fairly treated.

What prompted you to make youth the main topic of your films?

I chose to study youth because I believe that they are a neglected and marginalised age group that faces obstacles that impede their goals and negatively impact their mental health. These difficulties are not specific to their generation; I have encountered them, as have those who came before them.

I kept asking myself what would motivate a young person in their prime to risk everything, dive into the ocean, and start a covert migration because they believed it was the only way to ensure a brighter future.

After listening to them, I learned that they had lost their excitement and zeal for life, and I was greatly hurt by their sentiments of alienation and dissatisfaction both within their own nation and among their own people.

The contrasts individuals exhibit in their decisions, which blend the action and its opposite, also pique my interest. They appear to be caught between two distinct worlds—East and West—living a cultural and value duality and alternating between modernity, which they draw from and cling to its manifestations as imposed upon them by globalisation and digital influences, and authenticity, local identity, and tradition.

You addressed the subject of a young guy and a woman’s friendship. Do you think that friendships like these exist in Arab societies?

The two main characters in ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’ (played by the young Tunisian actors Aya Balagha and Salim Bakkar) have been friends since infancy. Their shared neighbourhood and challenging circumstances served as a unifying factor.

Their friendship was built on brotherhood, with each wishing for the other what they sought for themselves and working to support them, rather than a love relationship or a future marriage. Despite their different personalities—he is a sensitive lad, and she is a brave girl—their love worked and lasted.

The successful relationships I had in my amazing youth and my own personal experience served as inspiration for this kind of friendship. Because they are frequently kept under wraps to protect them, I think that although these kinds of friendships are feasible and common in our Arab societies, they are nonetheless uncommon.

What do you want audiences in Tunisia, the Arab world, and beyond to take away from your films?

I don’t try to convey a certain message. In order to allow viewers to freely interpret and develop their own understanding, I want to leave the field open. There are numerous ways to interpret any work of art.

I want the movie to be a forum for debate and inquiry, letting audiences form their own opinions and come to their own conclusions. Getting the audience to like the movie is not my main goal. What matters most to me is that they discuss the movie and the concepts it offered when they leave the theatre.

In my film ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’, for instance, I tackled the issue of escapism from both a fictitious and a factual standpoint. I brought attention to the anguish and existential fear that young Tunisians experience, which makes them feel as though they have no place in their own country.

This pushes individuals to take chances and look for a new location, an alluring choice, and a lifeline. I gave viewers the freedom to voice their ideas about the concept of escapism; some people embrace it, seeing it as a solution and migration as a dream, while others reject it, seeing it as a risk and an illusion.

In December 2025, your film ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’ took home the Audience Award at the Carthage Film Festival. What aspects of it appealed to viewers more than the 13 other feature films that were competing?

The film stood out for its daring approach, uncommon cinematic decisions, and depiction of young people’s lives. It communicated the traits and actions of youth through narrative, particularly visual storytelling. With their realism and surrealism, the pictures were able to convey the film’s situation with all of its concepts, symbolism, and ramifications without the use of spoken words.

By faithfully capturing the actions and emotions of the two main characters, they moved and touched the audience. They had to watch the movie because they found that it resonated with them and addressed their issues, which led them to become engrossed in its events, embrace its vision, and help shape its meaning.

Aya Bellagha and Salim Bakkar, the two youthful leads, also enthralled the crowd. Carrying the film on their shoulders, they gave it a special vibrancy and energy while making their stamp with authenticity and spontaneity. As a result of their similar fragility, marginalisation, and obsessions, the spectator felt sympathy for them.

The film’s soundtrack and literary elements, which conveyed the individuality of the two main characters and had a significant Arab cultural component, also demonstrated the harmony. The audience responded favourably to the film’s increased rhythm and emotional depth, which evoked songs they are familiar with and listen to both alone and with others. Each of these components had a part in drawing in the audience and establishing a link with the movie’s main idea.

Do you support human rights-conscious alternative filmmaking? What humanitarian vision do you have?

In my opinion, whether explicitly stated or not, art is inherently political and human. To help shape public awareness and effect change, cinema must be an artistic, cultural, and social activity that exposes the hidden truths and aspects of reality and brings its delicate, ignored, and marginalised issues to the public’s attention. Cinema is not a production that exists independently of reality.

Instead of preaching or providing prefabricated answers and solutions, my approach and purpose as a filmmaker is to encourage discussion, introspection, and a reconsideration of the reasons behind conflicts and divisions.

Lastly, how did you go about directing a road movie, and how did it impact the characters’ growth?

I felt that the “road” genre was ideal for my movie ‘Where the Wind Comes from?’  As the two protagonists drive from Tunis to southern Tunisia, I was able to depict both a physical and an internal journey, representing their unrelenting quest for salvation in the future while also expressing their fears and feelings of alienation in their surroundings.

Every phase of this journey represented the characters’ emotional development and represented a step toward transformation. Through the variety of faces, places, and energy that emerge throughout the film, this genre allowed me to highlight Tunisia’s human and geographical landscape.

Read more: Khaled Al-Hajar: Politicisation of International Film Festivals Requires Us to Have Self-Confidence & Produce Films that Reflect Our Issues & Communities