As I watch the conversations between Iranian director Sepideh Farsi and late Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, one thought keeps crossing my mind, “Oh, Fatima, you must’ve been a great friend. A funny one, too.” If anything, documentaries like Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk succeed in one key point: humanizing the “other”, the subject that it tackles. In this case, the subject is a beautiful Palestinian woman who sadly lost her life alongside nine members of her family on 16 April 2025, one day after the film was selected for Cannes’ ACID.
The documentary is built around conversations between women. Women talking and exchanging thoughts, but also sharing emotions. Hassouna’s smile is balanced by Farsi’s patience. The safety in which Farsi exists counteracts Hassouna’s scary life under siege in Gaza. It’s both beautiful and painful to watch, especially knowing the gloomy fate that awaits Hassouna, who speaks with a huge smile on her face despite the dreary living circumstances.
It’s so hard not to get emotionally invested in that documentary. Watching a bright, cheerful, faithful 24-year-old woman talk about her dreams of travel, and accomplishing things, and achieving the heights of her potential, only to remember that she hasn’t had a chance to accomplish any of the things she mentions in her conversations with the more mature, hardened, older woman. It’s as if Farsi knows the grim reality of life, the laws that life dictates who lives and who dies. But Hassouna doesn’t know, as she shares her excellent photographs taken around the occupation-torn Gaza, or smiles when she tries describing how she and other Palestinians can get used to smiling while living in the harshest, most inhumane conditions.
It’s a mythical concept to Farsi, but as the recordings progress and the bond between the women deepens, one can see how the cracks in Hassouna’s beautiful smile grow more prominent and visible. It’s heartbreaking to see the moments when she can’t even get that hopeful smile on her face, and it makes even the audience lose hope, not just her. For if a beautiful, 24-year-old can’t keep her high spirits about the situation in Gaza, how can we?
Yes, conditions are terrible. Life feels unbearable. But many Palestinians smile despite their suffering, hoping for a better future, which sadly many of them don’t live to see. Some hesitate to show they’re humiliated and broken by circumstances and injustice, so they smile and pretend the hardship isn’t there. Is it a coping mechanism? A survival strategy? Whatever it is, it no longer seems to matter because, sadly, Hassouna is no longer with us to explain.
What distinguishes Farsi’s documentary from other ones is the importance of having two women talk their hearts out, despite the culture and the language barrier; that feminine energy of compassion and solidarity is evident. It’s through the space holding and the empathy that the older woman provides for the younger one. It’s the no judgment zone, even when Farsi openly judges some of Hassouna’s beliefs and approach to life, she never looks down upon her or causes her distress in expressing herself the way she feels safe and free to do so. Every time the two women connect and disconnect, it’s an endearing moment captured on screen.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is not an easy film to watch. There were multiple moments when I paused and wiped tears from my eyes. I am no longer sure what the proper reaction to watching horrors on screen, captured by brave filmmakers who want to get out the word about the gravity of the situation in Palestine, should be. There’s so much pain and suffering in the world, and Farsi’s documentary only adds to it.
It’s not even cathartic watching a young woman who had so much hope for her future and the world lose that spark of life in her eyes, become a memory like many before and after her. But in Farsi’s defense, the key note to take from a film like this is how bravery should be commended, admired, and celebrated in bringing real-life people’s stories and tragedies to the front line, rather than burying them behind the walls of falsifying history and manipulating reality to satisfy the narrative that the leaders of the Western world want to sell.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Kino Lorber.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is not an easy film to watch. There were multiple moments when I paused and wiped tears from my eyes. I am no longer sure what the proper reaction to watching horrors on screen, captured by brave filmmakers who want to get out the word about the gravity of the situation in Palestine, should be. There’s so much pain and suffering in the world, and Farsi’s documentary only adds to it.
Jaylan Salah Salman is an Egyptian poet, translator, and film critic for InSession Film, Geek Vibes Nation, and Moviejawn. She has published two poetry collections and translated fourteen books for International Languages House publishing company. She began her first web series on YouTube, “The JayDays,” where she comments on films and other daily life antics. On her free days, she searches for recipes to cook while reviewing movies.
