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On 16 April 2025, a day after Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s intimate documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” was announced as a selection of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the ACID parallel section, the film’s subject, Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona, along with nine members of her family, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Gaza Strip. Suddenly, what had started as a film about life during wartime became an elegy for a woman whose spirit and smile will endure forever.
As I seek to contextualize the impact of this stunning work of nonfiction cinema, I want to share what my colleague Isaac Feldberg so beautifully wrote out of the film’s Cannes premiere, which took place on May 15th, less than a month after Hassona’s murder:
Farsi got her start photographing political protests in Iran before being forced into exile; she seems to intuitively grasp the unfathomable nature of her subjects’ daily circumstances, asking questions that guide their conversations as often toward beauty as bloodshed. […] The movie’s unconventional visual approach, which finds the director holding up one smartphone to record another, makes it impossible to forget the barriers separating this filmmaker from her subject.
Farsi came of age in Iran in the decade leading up to the 1979 revolution. An activist from a young age, while she was still a student, Farsi spent eight months in prison for hiding a friend and schoolmate during the 1981–1982 Iran Massacres. Although she had always found inspiration in the visual arts, she practiced photography in her home country. After finishing secondary school in 1984, she left Iran for Paris to study mathematics. Eventually, Farsi began making short films, and over the last few decades, has directed over a dozen shorts and features, working in both narrative fiction and documentary.
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Farsi about her film’s unique visual language, how making this film irrevocably changed her relationship to image making, and her hope that people will remember the unwavering spirit and singular life of Fatma Hassona forever.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I’d love to start by discussing how you filmed your conversations with Fatma. The way you filmed these conversations, the viewer can literally see the technology that helps you two have this conversation. Could you talk about your decision to film the way you did, and also your thoughts on how technology can both isolate and connect us in such a beautiful way?
This was a subversive use of technology. But not only that, it was clear that our connection was fragile, unstable, and unpredictable, because it could be cut off at any moment, and each conversation could be the last. The one on April 15th was our last conversation, without either of us knowing it.
Filming with a mobile phone is a low-key approach that, on the one hand, confers openness and modesty to the image. Which, strangely, opens the image rather than closing it due to the default or technical limitations. On the contrary, it really opens it in a plastic way. Plastic, meaning the image becomes like a painting at times: Low-key, pixelized. That could only happen with this kind of filming, and not with a high-tech camera or 4K filming. This was one reason.
The other reason was to be at the same level. Meaning that our conversations were going through two mobile phones, and I wanted to keep that same level, not to have a hierarchy of another camera taking over. That’s why I decided to film the mobile phone with another mobile phone, rather than with a camera. The third reason is that the whole witnessing that we have of this genocide and that of the massacres, everything arrives on our mobile phones. We also see it on TV sometimes and on computers, but most of the time we are on our phones scrolling through social media, witnessing the graphic nature of these images.
So I intended to create a different type of image with this low quality, which makes it more human, more open, in a way. Of course, the decision was made quickly, but I analyzed it more afterwards. It was an intuitive decision. Then, as time passed, I got used to it. I never thought I would change it.
The other decision was the framing. I put the phone vertically so I could really focus on her face. What I liked was also leaving some open space on the left and right, because had I taken both our faces, or had I kept it the other way, or had I cut, I would have lost those two bands left and right. That gives the image more depth. You see things happening around it—on my side, especially, and a little bit of my computer, my cat passing from the back. I think the intention was really to give the image some breathing room.
You said in Q&As that making this film changed your whole perception of image-making. Was that something that came when you were editing the movie, or was there a moment earlier when you realized your entire philosophy of film had changed?
It happened gradually. I’ve always been somewhat impatient and very speedy in motion. Filmmaking is a mix of quick action and long-term preparation, especially in editing and post-production. With this film, the filming was a long-term process, and also the editing and all the rest around it. Still, there was always this feeling of emergency that I felt that I needed to do something quickly with these images, to share them with the rest of the world, because I was aware of the importance of these images. For some reason, I was convinced about that right from the beginning.
When the film was finished and when Fatma was killed in a targeted attack, then it really, I think, flipped in yet another dimension in terms of my relationship to image making and to images. Because now, when I pick up a phone to film, there’s a part of my head thinking, what’s going to happen to these images, what will I do with them? I’ve never had that immediate thought before in my other work. This time, something happened—whether or not she was targeted in relation to this film or because of her photojournalism—that led to her being targeted. But in any case, the fact that she was killed had to do with images. She said the camera is a weapon. This is not in the film. I kept it out, but there was a conversation where she said that. And indeed, the camera is a weapon.
So yes, it totally changed my relationship to image-making. Now I’m thinking differently about my new projects—or my old projects. I’m going back to those that were in development before. My sense of priority, my feeling, and my physicality in image-making have changed. It’s not the same anymore. I need time to re-evaluate, because I’m still so much in the film and traveling with it every day. But yes, my relationship to image-making has changed a lot.
Fatma mentioned she wanted to photograph everything, to capture everything, to bear witness to everything, and publish it all. But obviously that’s difficult. The more you publish, the more people, at least in America, get desensitized to imagery, and that’s where curation comes in. As you were having these conversations with Fatma, I believe you said you had about 80 hours of recorded conversations. How did you curate the film so that you told a story, as opposed to publishing essentially an eighty-hour live stream?
Publishing everything in this case would not have made sense, as the volume would have diluted the impact. So choices needed to be made. What guided me? Basically, my compass was emotion, also information, but mainly emotion. I needed to build a narrative. It is a documentary, but you need to develop a narrative arc with the images. So I really focused on the conversations where we were closest, where she was most eloquent, when her feelings came out, and when she was conveying something substantial in terms of emotion and information. It usually was when something extraordinary happened. So that’s how I made my choice about what to do with this huge chunk of footage. Then gradually the structure became clearer. It was like making a sculpture.
Editing is always a bit like that, except that I was alone for most of it —until the very end. Then I had an advisor who helped me a lot. Farahnaz Sharifi, a great editor and Iranian filmmaker herself, really helped me make the last cuts emerge. The decisions, for instance, to keep the news excerpts were there from the beginning. I was conscious and confident that I needed to keep it and to date the film with them. So it was a matter of how to use them and how to build the rhythm and the tempo.
Then the photography is, of course, her images. That was the last thing, which was very important for the film, and I believe it became clear towards the end of the editing process where exactly they needed to be used.
What was really striking was seeing her vibrancy start to dampen. Her hope is always there, but you see her face grow gaunter as she isn’t able to eat as much. She’s still helping others, but I think you can see something change internally. The camera captures that. It’s really powerful. What was that like for you to witness? At one point, you say, “I can’t do anything,” and she responds, “You’re here with me.” That’s the power of human connection.
Well, the film, as you watch it today, if you take out that last conversation part, the end is that long traveling shot. That was the real end that I had intended for the film. She filmed that for me. This was the real ending of the film until she was killed. Afterwards, for a few weeks, I was unable to do anything to the film. I mean, I was working on it to make it ready—finishing post-production and sound—but basically I had decided not to change the editing at all.
Then, at the very last moment, maybe ten days before the premiere, I decided that I needed to put a little bit of that final conversation, and that’s how it is now. I intended to keep it as it was when she was alive. She hadn’t seen the final cut. We were supposed to see it together at Cannes.
By seeing these images the way we are exposed as powerless witnesses to the horror of maimed bodies, bodies that have been made unrecognizable, burnt or scattered, I mean horrible things that we see. But also people who have been dehumanized through propaganda. It makes us, on one hand, numb, because when you witness a lot of graphic images, many people tend to look away to protect themselves, either not believe it or look away, thinking they cannot stand it.
So another decision for me was to keep the war outside the frame, and keep it only through the sound, which is something that is, in my opinion, a powerful way to present the permanent and persistent presence of the military actions and the ongoing war and genocide. Through sound alone, our mind imagines the rest as we focus on her words and her face. Her face is like a territory in flux. We see the changes on her face, as you said, but it is a soft, very enlightened face that is slipping away gradually, and that is the ultimate horror of it.
The rest comes through the sound only. This is what makes it so strong, I think: it’s not an image you look away from; her face is so magnetic that you keep following her. And what she says is also very strong, but you always have the quadcopters flying over, and you hear the gunshots and whatnot. This was a deliberate decision: not to include graphic images.
What it was like to witness her face change and that internal change, and how it made you feel that?
Extremely bad. I told her this was the least that I was telling her. I felt much worse than what I would say to her, but it was very frustrating. If you really love somebody, you’re attached to the person, you feel the person is just drifting away, you can’t do anything, and the only thing you can do is talk to the person, and that too isn’t often. It creates a very aggressive feeling of powerlessness. But I had to do it because I didn’t have a choice. All I could do was be there for her whenever she could connect. I had to come to peace with that feeling, that with that guilt
I loved that you included her family members, both her younger brother on camera, but also the family members who’ve been martyred before you spoke with her. I wondered if you felt, in a way, that you were archiving these lives, archiving their existence, archiving these individuals?
Yes, because, even if—and I wish it were the case—gosh, even if they were alive, the connection is so fragile that I never knew whether we could connect the next day. Because of the unreliable connection, the sheer fact of disconnection was due to Israel’s control of the whole telecommunications system. So anytime they decide to, they cut it. I know that very well as an Iranian. The regime does the same thing, the Iranian regime, whenever they want to do it, they make a blackout, they just cut the internet, and that’s it, and you’re left with nothing.
So, from the very first moment I got in touch with her, through that first connection, I knew. That’s why my camera was already ready. I mean, I was already recording when she answered. This was the case every time I called her, because I knew these moments were impossible to recreate. They were unique, so that sense of archiving was there all the time.
We talked a bit about the news footage that you included. I wondered at the time if you followed how the US news was covering these same stories and how you chose which coverage to include in the final film?
I did have that systematic filming of newsreels, in the sense that I had already started from the very beginning—actually, very early after October 7—during this episode of the conflict. I started filming the TV even before I met her. So I have hours and hours of footage, depending on where I was at that moment. I always had Al Jazeera and then either French media or CNN. I did think at some point that it’d be interesting, because I did film the same event, told differently by different outlets. Still, if I had used that comparison and put those same events together, it would have taken over the film’s main timeline, which, for me, was our conversation.
So I decided to keep the news footage to a minimum. So, the way I chose the footage for each event, instead of using different media next to each other, I chose the one that was most eloquent to me, in either a good or in a bad way, and that At some point, Netanyahu was talking on, I think it was CNN, and so I put that moment in the film. At another point, it was Biden in France, so I chose that one. The UNICEF one, I remember very well, was an Al Jazeera one, which I find very striking, because at that moment the UNICEF chief was just revolted. He’s in the field, talking, and he doesn’t know how to keep his anger in check or control his reactions to this frustrating blocked aid situation.
During the editing process, for each piece of information I needed to include, I picked the one I thought was best. Sometimes it was the way the image was shown, or the way I had filmed it, because I was commenting on the news myself while filming, in the way I was filming—zooming, letting a reflection in, or allowing my own image in the frame.
For instance, that moment with Netanyahu, there’s my shadow on his, and I thought that was quite a clear comment, in the way I was filming it. No other comment was needed; the image in itself was, and because I didn’t make any modifications or interventions afterwards, what you see in the frame, as a frame, is the frame I had while I filmed. I didn’t change anything in post.
I was also really interested in the way you included so much of Fatma’s art, beyond her stunning photojournalism. You have her beautiful poem, and there’s the song that she sings. How much of that did she share with you, and how did you choose which of her works to include?
She started sharing many things with me very quickly. I think she wanted to. It was nice for her to share with someone. So, she sent me a song very quickly. I listened to it, and I was like, ”This is her voice.” Then I asked her if she sang, and she said yes. I was amazed at the beauty of the song she sent me. It’s not the one that is in the film. It was another piece. I asked her to send me more. That’s how it started.
And it was the same thing with her poems. She sent me a poem before I asked her to read it. She told me she was a writer, so I asked her to share some of her work. When she did, I translated them. The next time we connected, I asked her to read one for me. It was fascinating because what you see in her photos is also evident in prose, texts, and other pieces of writing. In all of her work, there was this common denominator of her sensibility, the same eyes that would describe something through words or through images.
It was interesting for me to put them next to each other. So I have some of her writing. Some were destroyed during the attack, and I don’t think there are any traces of many more, but I have some. A dozen or so poems that she shared with me.
Her poetry is so striking. She comes up with such unique imagery not just in her poetry but also in her everyday conversation. Something she said in a normal conversation became the title. It’s such a striking turn of phrase, and it just came out. You can really see her brilliance in how she speaks every day.
Her way of building images is what I really loved. I have been asked this question: why not speak in Arabic, and why did we speak English together? I did try to talk to her in Arabic. I understand Arabic, but I cannot speak it. You didn’t ask this, but I’m saying it to explain that I think, through the limitations she had in English, and because of her sense of poetry, she would build images with her limited words. Sometimes, instead of having the exact words, she would create an image. And this sentence is similar to that.
The film title is, instead of using a sophisticated word or expression, you know, she just builds poetry while talking in real time. And this was the brilliant thing we had, and this is why I prefer to keep talking to her in English: then she would invent new expressions, new words, new images.
How did the perspective that she brought to life change your ideas of how you look at life?
It changed my perspective, yes. In terms of my faith and religious belief, no. But in terms of belief in life and hope, yes, it did affect my vision.
At one point, she quotes the line from “The Shawshank Redemption” about hope being a dangerous thing, and I believe, in the film, you say you hadn’t seen it. I was wondering if you watched the movie to get the context?
This is a weird thing. I can’t bring myself to watch it. I’ve sat down like ten times to say, “Okay, now you have to watch this.” I asked my daughter to find it for me. But it’s hard for me to sit down and watch it. So I haven’t yet, but I will definitely. Every time someone asks me, I say, “No, not yet, but I will soon.”
I was wondering how you felt about witnessing her humor and resilience, built on hope and humor, even though she doesn’t think she’s a normal person, keeping that bit of normalcy amidst not just this current moment of genocide but generations of oppression?
I’m sure you remember what I told her there: that hope is a dangerous thing, but we need it. I do mean it exactly for the reason that you’re saying. Partially, because if you do not have hope, then you will probably lose your mind and do something crazy, or you will just let yourself die and not hold on anymore. In the case of Iran, I told her that we have third and fourth-generation Iranians who are fighting for their freedom. Every time we go from bad to worse, but if there were no hope, people would give up. She said hope is a dangerous thing, but I think she meant you need hope. This is why she was saying it. It was a strange way of expressing herself, by negation; she was saying that because she had that smile.
During the whole conversation, she’s just smiling, and it’s not amazing. She looks like an icon. I mean, the image was breaking. Her face was becoming like a painting with that low light, you know? She used to put open pages on her phone to light her face when it was too dark, and we were desperate to talk. So she said, “Let’s see. I’ll do something.” Then all of a sudden, her face was brighter. I would ask what she did, and she would laugh and respond, “I opened a page.”
That conversation was a very special moment within the whole series we had. A day earlier, she had sent me that series of photos that are in the film afterwards, of the kid washing the blood and flesh with the water, which is the most horrible thing, but also the strongest thing, and most confrontational photos she ever did, and sent to me, and I had received them the night before that conversation. Still, in the film, I use them afterwards. I asked her about her choices and curation, how she thinks, and what commands her when she takes photos, and she explained the mechanism to me. So, then I put the images for the viewers to see what we were talking about.
What do you hope people will take away from the film when they’re done watching it?
Palestinian dignity. Fatma’s smile. Hope for humanity. Her face, her words, her personality, become a face for the many Palestinians, many stories that have no face and no identity. The way she personifies that cause and that identity, I think, is so open and generous that it resonates with many other stories. That’s how she becomes an icon or representative of her people. So I want the audience to take these positive aspects away with them after they watch the film, and the fact that she wanted her death to be loud, and her photos to travel. I hope that people will remember her forever.
Are there any women who have either made films in the past or make films contemporarily that you find inspirational or that you think more people should see?
In my view, there is a whole new school of documentary filmmakers in Iran who’ve done brilliant things and are doing so now. These women are all roughly the same generation, filmmakers, activists for women’s rights, and dissidents. One of them is the person whom I named earlier, Farahnaz Sharifi. She made a film, which I find really brilliant, that was at Berlinale last year, called “My Stolen Planet.”
Oh, I saw that. I loved that film. That’s another one that’s really about reclaiming archives.
Exactly. There is another person, a filmmaker named Mina Keshavarz, who made a film titled “The Art of Living in Danger.” She also works a lot with archives. There’s another filmmaker of the same generation and group; actually, they all made a film together called “Profession: Documentarist,” which features eight or ten filmmakers.
The third one I was going to mention is Firouzeh Khosrovani. She won IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) a couple of years ago with a film called “The Radiograph of a Family.” This year, she had a film in Venice called “Past Future Continuous.” It’s a documentary, but it’s also a reenactment. It’s the story of a woman in exile in the States, unable to return to Iran, who asks a company to install CCD cameras in her parents’ home in Tehran so she can watch them from afar. The whole film is done through that perspective.
It’s co-directed with Morteza Ahmadvand, another artist. I find this idea brilliant. It’s a powerful statement about the whole of Iranian society and this distance, and, in a way, it relates to my film, too, because she fills the gap with technology. It’s a very interesting film.
There are many others. Delphine Seyrig has inspired me a lot. Marguerite Duras, in a different way. But who else? Agnès Varda, of course. She’s one of the greats.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/XNcEwTl
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