Our understanding of the applicability of fluid dynamics as an effective description of matter has been recently challenged by high-energy collider experiments where the signatures of a strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma have been reported in collisions with protons or nuclei emitting only a few dozens of final-state particles. Here, we investigate the emergence of hydrodynamics in an ultra-cold Fermi gas in the regime of small particle numbers, by looking at the inversion of the initial aspect ratio (or elliptic flow) of systems released from an elliptical trap. Elliptic flow is demonstrated with as few as 10 strongly-interacting atoms, and in absence of any separation between microscopic and macroscopic scales typically required for a hydrodynamic description. I discuss ongoing efforts aimed at the understanding of these experimental observations.