Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk / Dae rudak fi yadayk w-amshi

Sepideh Farsi: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk /ضع روحك على يدك وامشِ/ Dae rudak fi yadayk w-amshi / (PS/FR/IR 2025) featuring Fatma Hassouna (1999-16 April 2025 Al Touffah, Gaza City).

/ضع روحك على يدك وامشِ/ 

2025 Palestine, France, Iran

Director: Sepideh Farsi

Non-fiction, featuring: Fatima Hassouna, Sepideh Farsi

Languages: English, French, Arabic

Subtitles: English

113 min

Distributor: Cercamon

Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

Fri 19.9.2025 at 16.00–17.53 Bio Rex Lasipalatsi

Omar Fasolah (HIFF 2025): "A heartbreaking documentary about Fatma Hassona, a young Palestinian photographer killed in an Israeli airstrike, told through video calls between her and the filmmaker."

"Sepideh Farsi’s previous picture The Siren (R&A 2023) animated the Iran-Iraq war, of which the director had personal experience. Distant memories return with the onset of the Gazan genocide in 2023. Farsi hopes to go on location, but as this turns out to be impossible, she begins to film the Palestinians leaving Gaza. Through them she finds out about photojournalist Fatma Hassona, and the two strike up a virtual friendship in the spring of 2024."

"The video diary tinged with technical difficulties and connectivity issues focuses on everyday life, but dreams too. Once in a while Hassona’s face freezes on the screen, and the frame is filled with her smile, showing the purest positivity, talent and resolution."

"An Israeli airstrike killed Hassona and ten of her family members in their home in April 2025. Only a day earlier, the filmmakers had found out that their documentary would premiere at Cannes. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, born in the midst of mass destruction, is a bare and honest depiction of the time we live in." Omar Fasolah (translated by Adrian Murtomäki)

"Sydäntäsärkevä dokumentti Israelin ilmaiskussa tapetusta nuoresta palestiinalaisesta valokuvaajasta Fatma Hassonasta, johon dokumentaristi pitää yhteyttä videopuheluiden välityksellä."

"Sepideh Farsin edellinen elokuva The Siren (R&A 2023) kuvasi animaation keinoin Irakin-Iranin sotaa, josta hänellä oli omakohtaisia kokemuksia. Kaukaiset nuoruuden muistot palautuvat jälleen ohjaajan mieleen Gazan kansanmurhan alkaessa lokakuussa 2023. Hän toivoo pääsevänsä paikan päälle, mutta sen käydessä mahdottomaksi alkaa ohjaaja kuvata Gazasta tulevia palestiinalaisia. Heidän kauttaan hän tutustuu Gazassa asuvaan kuvajournalistiin Fatma Hassonaan, jonka kanssa syntyi keväällä 2024 virtuaalinen ystävyys."

"Teknisten haasteiden ja yhteysongelmien värittämä videopäiväkirja keskittyy jokapäiväiseen elämään, mutta myös unelmiin. Välillä Hassonan kasvot jähmettyvät näytölle, ja ruudun täyttää hänen hymynsä, jossa tiivistyy elämänmyönteisyys, lahjakkuus ja periksiantamattomuus."

"Israelin ilmaisku tappoi Hassonan ja hänen kymmenen perheenjäsentään heidän kotiinsa huhtikuussa 2025. Vain päivää ennen iskua tekijät olivat saaneet tietää, että heidän yhdessä tekemänsä dokumenttielokuva saisi ensi-iltansa Cannesissa. Joukkotuhon keskellä syntynyt Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk kuvaa alastomuudessaan aikaa, jota elämme." Omar Fasolah

AA: Sepideh Farsi's powerful Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, focusing on the heroic photo journalist Fatma Hassona's coverage of the genocide in Gaza, invites comparison with the best of its kind, such as Waad al-Kateab's For Sama (2019), the first person testimony of the terror bombings of Aleppo. Both films are, among other things, evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They document the most shameful nadir of the respective armies who have been reduced to baby killers on a massive scale.

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is essentially a record of phone video dialogues between Fatma Hassona and Sepideh Farsi, often covered in two-way mobile screen, sometimes also solo screens. There are also Hassona's stunning photographs, excellent in their visual quality and terrifying as documents of atrocities. Also included are montages of destruction and family photo albums. 

The dominant visual memory is that of the sunny smile of Fatma Hassona. This reminds me of what Matti Kuusi said about Finland's devastating war times: "of supreme importance was the joy". When you are aware of an imminent death, every second of life is precious and a source of joy.

The terrorizers of Palestinians have totally, completely and absolutely misunderstood them. This is their land, and even beyond death they belong to it and only to it. You can mass murder them, and they will never be beaten, on the contrary, they will only grow stronger. 

The great substance of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is about the triumph of the spirit. These people are in it forever.

The film is overlong, and it is practically completely in foreigner English. The often low tech quality is part of the documentary truth of the film made in circumstances bordering on the impossible.

Towards the end we see an extraordinary forward tracking shot of the Gaza City taken from beyond the windshield of a car. It is a classic shot in its own right, conveying the enormity of the destruction with Bazinian "montage interdit" impact.

Followed by the last dialogue between Sepideh Farsi and Fatma Hassona. The next day Fatma and her entire family were massacred by the IDF. The Gaza war has earned Herostratic notoriety as the war where a record number of journalists have been murdered. If the aggressors imagine that they can suppress the truth this way, they have failed. Their victims become immortal while the aggressors' reputations are consigned to eternal shame.

...

Love & Anarchy the Helsinki International Film Festival dedicates four films to the Free Palestine theme. I would like to see films also devoted to the deeds of Hamas, Hizbollah and their soul brothers. Without them we cannot understand anything about what is going on.

I would also like to see Israeli films on Palestine. They are being cancelled by the Israeli government. We should not follow the example of that government. I mean films like:

Dani Rosenberg: The Vanishing Soldier (2023)

Natalie Braun: Shooting (2025)

Nadav Lapid: Yes! (2025)

Shai Carmeli-Pollak: The Sea (2025)

...

Once Upon a Time in Gaza is a showcase of how world history can be telescoped in a low budget film.

What I miss most is the big picture. We live in the age of the instant, and indeed, Instagram, but more than ever we need the opposite, the long arch and the capacity to handle complexity.

The tragedy of the Middle East is one of the most complex in political history. We should start with the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate of Palestine and face the injustice done to Arabs and Jews. Colonial powers set a death trap for both. Everybody who refused asylum for Jews (read Exodus by Leon Uris) shares a responsibility for what is happening today.

...

The slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free" was shouted before the screenings. The slogan is open to interpretation. Among them is the 1988 Hamas charter (the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement), revised in the 2017 charter. The ultimate goal is an Islamic state of Palestine and the destruction of Israel, in 2017 called the Zionist entity. The explicit antisemitism of the 1988 charter was edited away in the 2017 charter.

FROM THE 2017 HAMAS CHARTER: 

2. "Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity."

18. "The following are considered null and void: the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate  Document, the UN Palestine Partition Resolution, and whatever resolutions and measures that derive from them or are similar to them. The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah; it is also in violation of human rights that are guaranteed by international conventions, foremost among them is the right to self-determination."

19. "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, Judaization or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate. Rights never lapse."

20. "Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.  However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus."

...

Ghazi Hamad

Hamas Political Bureau

LBC TV (Lebanon)

24 October 2023

GHAZI HAMAD: "Israel is a country that has no place on our land.

We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished.

We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.

We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again.

The Al-Aqsa Deluge [7 October] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth... because we have the determination to resolve, and the capabilities to fight.

Will we have to pay a price?

Yes, and we are ready to pay it.

We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.

We did not want to harm civilians, but there were complications on the ground, and there was a party in the area with (civilian) population...

It was a large area, across 40 kilometers...

The occupation must come to an end."

Q: Occupation where? In the Gaza strip?

GHAZI HAMAD: No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.

Q: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

GHAZI HAMAD: Yes, of course.

The existence of Israel is illogical.

The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood and tears.

It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period.

Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do.

October 7, October 10, October 1,000, 000... everything we do is justified.

https://youtu.be/BJNccvNJtGk?si=7DGHVqqwtwOGT3Sp

https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-repeat-october-seven-until-israel-annihilated-victims-everything-we-do-justified