Tunis-Djerba

Tunisia, France, Sweden \ Arabic \ 100 min

Director: Amel Guellaty

Producer: Karim Aitouna, Olivier Guerpillon, Asma Chiboub

Synopsis:

Alyssa, 18, and Mehdi, 24, have been bonded since childhood by an unambiguous friendship. Alyssa has a troubled family that she is in charge of while Mehdi struggles to find a decent work in order to meet his family’s expectations. To escape their harsh realities, Mehdi invents stories through his surrealist drawings, and Alyssa lives, whenever she can, in an imagined world where she is free. One day, they find out about a drawing contest in Djerba, which would grant the winner an internship in Germany. Alyssa sees it as the opportunity to turn their lives around and flee away. She pushes her friend to take part in it. As the contest is held on the opposite side of the country, they start a crazy road trip where they go through adventures and hardships. Their friendship is put to the test and they discover the best and the worst of Tunisia. Mehdi doesn’t win the contest but both come out changed by this adventure. A year later, Mehdi immigrates illegally to Italy as Alyssa couldn’t leave her family behind. Harsh reality took over their dreams.

Director:

Amel Guellaty

Amel is a Tunisian photographer and director. In 2017, she makes multi-award winning Black Mamba (20’).
She is now post-producing Just like boys! (20’) and developing her feature debut, Tunis-Djerba.

Producer:

Olivier Guerpillon:

A French-born Swedish producer and director. He has produced and co-produced a range of acclaimed and award-winning feature films such as SOUND OF NOISE (Cannes Critic’s Week 2010), BROKEN HILL BLUES by Sofia Norlin (Berlinale, Tribeca 2014) and co-pros as BEYROUTH HOTEL by Danielle Arbid (Locarno 2011) as well as the upcoming COSTA BRAVA LEBANON by Mounia Akl (MAFF 2018).

Asma Chiboub

Based in Tunisia, Asma produced short films like several award-winning “Black Mamba”, by Amel Guellaty. She’s currently post-producing the latter’s short, “Just like boys!” and developing “Tunis-Djerba”, a dramatic comedy debut, also by Amel Guellaty.  Asma worked as a reading consultant for MedFilm Factory and as a committee organization member in several editions of the Carthage Film Festival. She attended SOCRATES Script Editing training program, DOCMED Documentary production training program and MedFilm Factory Fiction production program. She’s also attending EAVE 2020’s Producers’ workshop with the project “Tunis-Djerba”.

Karim Aitouna: 

Karim works between France & Morocco. He produced Anna Roussillon’s I AM THE PEOPLE, David Yon’s THE NIGHT AND THE KID, SANS BRUIT by MML Collective and lately POISONOUS ROSES, by Ahmed Fawzi.