Fatem Hassona is tired, an understandable state of being as a Palestinian undergoing occupation from Americans. She tries to smile through it all and mostly succeeds, or maybe it’s me remembering her first smile. She gave the world that first smile around April 2024, her first video conversation with documentary filmmaker and producer Sepideh Farsi. Farsi’s film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk captures two hours of conversations between the two. These conversations usually take place weekly, although they get more sparse because Hassona has to constantly move.
Sometimes, Farsi shows her cats and her life as a travelling filmmaker in contrast again to Hassona. It’s easy to feel guilty about these contrasts and Farsi is aware of all of that. The conversations between them are key here still, as they don’t always talk about the genocide against Palestinians. Hassona gets the idea that hope is dangerous from The Shawshank Redemption, reminding us of her normal dreams. Fatem Hassona is just one of hundreds of thousands who died because of colonization that needs to stop.
Farsi, in depicting Hassona, a regular, normal young woman from Gaza, but this feels like a diptych. Essential to that diptych Hassona, a young woman who can maybe save herself and get out of the Gaza Strip. “I think Gaza needs me at this time,” she says, a strip that needs young, brave photojournalists. People like her, who are of the land, should have the choice to stay and have fruitful lives.
- Rated: 15
- Genre: Documentary, War
- Release Date: 9/10/2025
- Directed by: Sepideh Farsi
- Produced by: Annie Ohayon-Dekel, Sepideh Farsi
- Studio: 24images, Rêves d'Eau productions
