Fifty-nine-year-old Sepideh Farsi left her native Iran a few years after the Islamic Revolution threatened to put her in jail. She became a human rights activist and filmmaker in Paris. In April 2024, she contacted 24-year-old Gazan photographer Fatima Hassouna on her mobile phone for the first time. For the next 12 months, the two women remained in constant contact. Sepideh hoped to inject some compassion and comfort in Fatima’s life, while the young woman sought to create a register and send a call-to-action to the world.
Roughly 80% of the film consists of mobile-to-mobile video calls captured from another mobile. At times, Sepideh’s second mobile phone is visible in the small mirror window on the screen of the first device. The filmmaker’s phone is often covered in dust. The conversations are very difficult because Fatima’s English is limited and her internet connection very poor. The image keeps freezing and dropping. There is no effort to conceal the primitive nature of the communication – this is a reflection of Fatima’s hazardous predicament. It is these shaky, low resolution videos that provide Fatima with hope and resilience. She repeatedly thanks Sepideh for simply “being there”.
These conversations are interspersed with Fatima’s war photographs, some Al Jazeera footage and Sepideh’s cat. The focus remains on the genuine bond that the two women establish.
Death is everywhere. Israel murdered 13 members of Fatima’s family, her neighbours, the neighbours of her friend with good internet connection, her 31-year-old best friend, and many others. She recalls the day she came across her aunt’s severed head on the street. The sound of planes, drones and Apache helicopters throwing bombs or randomly shooting people from above is pervasive. Food is extremely scarce, as Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war. She eats solely tinned food. She not seen fresh food for months, and dreams of one day savouring chicken again. Large mushroom explosions take place casually as Fatima ad Sepideh talk.
Not all conversations are easy. Fatima hints at an appreciation of the Ayatollah, only for Sepideh to explain the oppressive tactics of the Iranian regime. She questions whether Fatima opted or was coerced into wearing a hijab. Her reluctant answer is very enlightening. Fatima’s allegiance to Hamas is also discussed, and her views remain largely ambiguous. She seems to appreciate their resistance, while also recognising that she barely knows the newly “elected” leader.
The most remarkable feature of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is Fatima’s broad smile, with gorgeous white teeth adorning her face. She is always optimistic, despite the bleak developments nad the little prospect of change. She claims that “the most powerful thing” that she has is the fact that “she has nothing to lose”, in a very provocative and shocking inversion of values. This is undoubtedly an extreme survival mechanism, and perhaps the main reason why Fatima puts up a cheerful facade.
Viewers may not find Fatima’s smile necessarily comforting, but disturbing instead. It is unsettling that someone should resort to such unhinged optimism. The image of Fatima’s impossible smile will haunt you long after you have viewed this movie. It represents the audacity of hope in the face of the most unspeakable atrocities known to mankind. “Hope is dangerous”, asserts our character with a quote that she took from Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1995).
In the film’s final scene, the last conversation between Sepideh and Fatima, the filmmaker breaks the news to her elated subject that the documentary has been selected for the Cannes Film Festival, and that she too is invited to attend the event. The spark of excitement in the eyes of the photographer is very moving, Her smile finally comes out natural and genuine. For the first time, it seems that she has allowed herself to be happy and authentically excited about something. The date is April 15th, 2024. The Israeli forces murdered Fatima and other members of her family in their sleep just the following day.
The insertion of the post-Cannes-selection conversation in the film is very revealing. Documentary is a fast-shifting beast with no beginning and no end, particularly if the topic is an unresolved one, taking place in the present and right in front of our eyes. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is cinema at its most precarious and raw. It represents the audiovisual stripped to the bare essentials. Precisely for that reason, it is brutally honest and emotionally eviscerating. An unmissable watch.
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk showed at the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing at the 31st Sarajevo, and the 25th REC Tarragona. In cinemas on Friday, August 22nd.
