Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk: Will the world believe you, Fatima?

In an elegant cinema hall at the Cannes International Film Festival, Fatima Hassouna emerged from the screen – not as a performance, but as a living truth that shattered expectations and stirred the heart.

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, directed by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, is not a film that needs description. Rather, it is a living testimony of a girl from Gaza named Fatima Hassouna, who wanted to dream like anyone else, and live on her own terms. So she chose to walk, with her entire soul, through a minefield called life under the bombardment.

Fatima, who was martyred before she could see the film completed, was not acting, nor was she embodying a role. She was simply living – in a moment when life itself was conspiring against her.

The film is not an ordinary documentary. It is a message, a living testimony, and a cry that could only be fully voiced through silence.

The timing alone gives the film a deeply existential dimension. Fatima was killed on April 16, 2025, just one day after she was officially informed that the film she had recorded with her phone from the heart of the genocide would be screened at Cannes. She never saw the film, but she made it. She never climbed the Red Steps of Cannes, but she filled the screen with her truth.

What truly sets the film apart is that it doesn’t elicit tears or plead for sympathy. With her long experience documenting from conflict zones, Sepideh Farsi treated Fatima as an equal – not a subject. She did not attempt to glamorize her image or frame her as an extraordinary heroine. She simply allowed life to unfold, and let her lens observe humbly. That choice, in a time when the Palestinian cause is often reduced to hasty categorizations, is in itself a moral and artistic stance.

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, directed by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, is not a film that requires description. Rather, it is a living testimony of a girl from Gaza named Fatima Hassouna, who wanted to dream like anyone else, and live on her own terms. So she chose to walk, with her entire soul, through a minefield called life under the bombardment.

The language of image and sound: A truth that shakes the frame

During the premiere, a friend sent me a video showing the Cannes audience standing for a moment of silence in honor of Fatima. It was not a formal, protocol-driven minute of silence, it was a moment of recognition that cinema, in its most harrowing moments, can restore an unerasable presence to those who are gone.

Fatima’s image on screen was large, simple, and real – just as she wanted it to be.

Visually, the film doesn’t follow a conventional structure. It is built around a series of recorded video calls between Fatima and Iranian director Sepideh Farsi. The camera is not just a "lens," but rather is an extension of Fatima’s senses: it moves with ease and honesty, unbound by the usual rules of visual composition, yet it stuns with the sheer truth it delivers. It doesn't seek beauty or aesthetic perfection in the shot – it seeks its impact.

Fatima wasn’t just a Palestinian girl. She was a symbol of a generation walking the line of fire with peace in its heart.

The camera shakes, the lighting is dim, the shadows are natural, and the fatigue is visible, but the image is more real than any polished scene.

The sound in the film is raw, authentic, marked by the whistle of shells or sudden disconnected calls, but it presents Fatima in her own voice: steady, alive, and so assured that it puts anyone involved in cinema to shame.

No external voice, no commentary – only Fatima speaks. This isn’t just a stylistic choice; it’s an ethical stance by the director: to preserve the right of a besieged voice to be heard.

Fatima… From witness to a creator of meaning

The editing moves between conversations with Fatima and scenes from Gaza, without overshadowing her presence – on the contrary, it reinforces it. There are no random jumps in time, but rather a rhythm that mirrors her daily life: preparing food, laughing, fixing her headscarf, running to the window to film the smoke. These seemingly fleeting, minor details were her weapon against the erasure of memory. Every scene felt like it could be the last, making each moment dense, alive – as if life itself were racing against the bombs.

In a simple yet astonishing moment, Fatima laughs while fixing her hijab and says, “I don’t have time to put a filter on.” That line sums up everything: there’s no time for embellishment in a place where truth dies every day. In another moment, she says, “My eyes can’t document anymore, but my heart can.” In that confession, she transforms from a witness to the event into a creator of meaning – from victim to an indelible voice.

The film doesn’t present Fatima as a biographical subject, but builds her character through everyday details. We see her laugh, get angry, joke, and fall silent… and in each of those moments, she reveals something new about herself. In the end, we’re left standing before a fully realized person and a character that is complete – not by the size of the role, but by the depth of the experience.

The film doesn’t present Fatima as a biographical subject, but builds her character through everyday details. We see her laugh, get angry, joke, and fall silent… and in each of those moments, she reveals something new about herself. In the end, we’re left standing before a fully realized person and a character that is complete – not by the size of the role, but by the depth of the experience.

When the screening ended, I was told that the audience didn’t clap right away – instead, there was silence.

That noble silence that only follows a slap to the conscience. Fatima wasn’t just a Palestinian girl. She was a symbol of a generation walking the line of fire with peace in its heart. Fatima’s face on the screen was large, simple, and real – just as she wanted it to be.

When the screening ended, I was told that the audience didn’t clap right away – instead, there was silence. That noble silence that only follows a slap to the conscience. Fatima wasn’t just a Palestinian girl. She was a symbol of a generation walking the line of fire with peace in its heart. Fatima’s face on the screen was large, simple, and real – just as she wanted it to be.

Fatima never saw the film. But she made it. She never walked the red carpet, but she filled the screen with her truth.

Because she wrote its ending without knowing it.

She once said, while holding her camera: “Maybe one day they’ll watch us, not because we died, but because we spoke the truth.”

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is not just about Gaza. It’s about what it means for a human being to be under siege yet still insist on telling the story." Fatima was not merely an eye that observed and documented, but a heart beating in a narrow moment in time. In choosing to tell the story, she was opening a window, and in every small detail she declared: “I am here… I am not a number.”

And now the world is watching… But will it believe, ya Fatima?