‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’ Review: A Stirring Chronicle of a Gaza Journalist Who Was Killed Before Its Cannes Premiere

by

Sepideh Farsi’s documentary titled “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” narrates the story of 25-year-old Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, who lived under the continuous threat of bombings. This tale gains significant poignancy due to its context. Tragically, on April 16, 2025, a day after the movie’s selection for the Cannes Film Festival was announced, Hassona lost her life in an Israeli air raid, transforming the film into a cinematic tribute to a life that was tragically cut short.

The Iranian director of Farsi uses an unconventional visual style to portray Hassona, a strategy that proves effective in the end. Instead of using separate cameras, he films one smartphone with another, thereby establishing multiple levels of separation between the viewer and the subject. This technique mirrors the real-life distance between the two women during their frequent WhatsApp video conversations. Farsi is prohibited from entering Gaza, while Hassona is unable to leave. As a result, their interactions are limited to pixelated calls with delayed audio due to Hassona’s poor internet connection, serving as their sole means of communication.

Instead of choosing clearer, conventional methods like screen-recording or using Hassona’s DSLR camera for this footage, an unconventional approach with a layered effect – lo-fi mise en abyme – was selected. This decision serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it mirrors the distance that remained between Hassona and Farsi throughout their year-long conversations from April 2024. Secondly, when Farsi incorporates Hassona’s photographs into the footage, they become even more impactful. Her images of Palestinian life and loss, captured amidst the ruins of destroyed buildings, show a profound mastery over shadow, composition, and focus that starkly contrasts with the grainy video calls.

The heart of the film lies in the phone calls, which manage to captivate viewers despite their low quality. Hassona, speaking in broken English, shares her life story and daily struggles, ranging from food scarcity at home to the constant threat of bombs outside. Yet, amidst the devastation, she maintains a bright smile as she relays each update, trying to keep hope alive even amidst unimaginable hardships. The calls are frequently interrupted by helicopters and drones overhead and explosions nearby, with one instance showing smoke billowing from a spot where a neighbor’s house once stood.

The phone calls in the movie are what make it special, even though they aren’t very good quality. Hassona talks about her life in broken English, sharing stories of hunger at home and danger outside. Despite everything bad happening around her, she tries to stay positive and laugh things off, even when faced with terrible situations. The calls often get cut off due to helicopters, drones, and bombs nearby. At one point, she points the camera towards a cloud of smoke, showing where a neighbor’s house used to be.

In this scenario, Farsi is filming her laptop during breaks between calls, with news from Gaza and Israel playing continuously in the background. She’s not just an observer but also a reflection of the helplessness felt by many amidst these events, seen as a silhouette on her smudged screen. Simultaneously, she seeks Hassona’s thoughts on the situation, which she provides with a reassuring smile. However, it’s the seemingly trivial stories about Hassona’s daily life that stand out, as she adopts various hijabs and accessories to match her outfits, providing a stark contrast to the ongoing turmoil in the news.

Hassona is not only stylish and incredibly gifted, but she also expresses her Arabic poetry and songs in Farsi. As the film unfolds over its 110 minutes, it grows increasingly heart-wrenching to realize that we can never encounter or truly understand her. The timing of her death being close to the Cannes Film Festival suggests minimal alterations in the movie, with just an extra scene and a closing acknowledgement added. However, Farsi’s artistic style, which could have seemed overly sentimental, instead proves endearing and heartbreaking, showcasing the intimate way a filmmaker came to know their subject before her passing. Despite its tragic ending, the movie is inspiring in its resilience and hope amidst adversity, while also vividly demonstrating the heavy toll of occupation, revealing the full extent of lives and aspirations destroyed by war.

Read More

2025-05-22 02:46