“Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is Necessary, Powerful Documentary Journalism
There is a siege happening in Gaza, and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a firsthand account of it. Sepideh Farsi’s film premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, but the subject of the film wasn’t able to attend the world premiere. Sometimes scheduling or visa issues make it impossible for a film’s subject to get to the South of France, but neither is the case for Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, a film that is staggering in its bravery and vision.
Director Sepideh is an Iranian filmmaker who fled her home country in 2009 due to repercussions from her film Tehran Bedun-e Mojavvez (Tehran Without Permission), a documentary that captured life in the capital city. It was shot entirely on a Nokia camera phone because of the government’s filming restrictions. Because of her own life experiences, Sepideh felt drawn to document the war that erupted in Gaza in October of 2023. She couldn’t get into Gaza, so Sepideh began speaking with refugees in Cairo. In these conversations, she was introduced to Fatima Hassouna, a photojournalist living in Gaza. It’s Fatima that Sepideh chose to center her documentary on.
Kino Lorber
Virtually all of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is presented through choppy Whatsapp video calls between Fatima and Sepideh. It’s one thing to hear about the missile strikes on the news, the devastation and starvation happening there, but it’s another entirely to hear it firsthand from a woman who is living there. Fatima answers every video call with the cheeriest smile you’ve ever seen. It’s the sort of smile that looks like it belongs to a Disneyland theme park employee, not a young woman living in daily fear of being bombed.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is an intimate, firsthand look at life in Gaza through the eyes of Fatima and her family. Throughout the film, various family members appear in the corners of the video calls with Sepideh. They’re sometimes hopeful, sometimes shy about the idea of having a camera in their face, but they paint a picture of reality in Gaza. There are days when Fatima is more hopeful than others. She begins the film fervently believing that she wants to stay in Gaza to fight for the only home she and her family have ever known. By the end, she is distracted, depressed, and desperate to leave. To get back to normalcy. That’s perhaps the biggest argument of the film. Fatima doesn’t dream of revenge or anger, but of the aspects of life we take for granted. The boring, expected parts of our reality. To hang out with friends, to eat chocolate, and to live a life without fear of being bombed.
Kino Lorber
Fatima asks Sepideh if she’s seen Shawshank Redemption. When Sepideh says no, Fatima tells Sepideh that there’s a line of dialogue she thinks of often: “Hope is a dangerous thing.” Another famous quote from Shawshank Redemption says “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Hope is a difficult thing to have in a reality like the one Fatima lives in, yet she recognizes the power it holds. Hope keeps a fight going even when everything else seems lost.
The reason Fatima Hassouna doesn’t attend the world premiere of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival is because the day after Sepideh is informed of the film’s acceptance to the festival, Fatima and her family are killed by an Israeli missile strike. It is a devastating conclusion to this film and the reality of the devastation that is occuring in Gaza. A card at the end of the documentary says that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed the killing of 211 journalists in Gaza since October 7. Fatima was a prolific photojournalist who wanted people to see the reality of what was happening to her home. She said, “Let people face the truth of the war.” While she is no longer alive to see it, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a powerful continuation of her desire for people to see the truth.
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