Fatma Hassona, the Palestinian protagonist of Sepideh Farsi’s “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” – selected for Cannes’ ACID – was tragically killed with her family by an Israeli missile that targeted her building, the ACID team has shared with Variety.
“Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite the bombs, mourning and hunger. We heard her story, rejoiced at each of her appearances to see her alive, we feared for her,” said the team in a statement.
“We had watched and programmed a film in which this young woman’s life force seemed like a miracle. This is no longer the same film that we are going to support and present in all theaters, starting with Cannes. All of us, filmmakers and spectators alike, must be worthy of her light.”
Sepideh Farsi, the Iranian director of the film, also wrote about the tragic event:
“Maybe I’m ushering in my death
now
Before the person standing in front of me loads
His elite sniper’s rifle
And it ends
And I end.
Silence.
Those are the words of Fatma Hassona, or Fatem to her friends, excerpted from a long poem called ‘The Man Who Wore His Eyes.’” A poem that smells of sulfur, that smells of death already, but that is also full of life, as was Fatem, until this morning, before an Israeli bomb took her life, as well as the lives of her entire family, reducing their home to rubble,” she said.
Hassona, who was based in Gaza, had turned 25.
“I got to know her through a Palestinian friend in Cairo, while I was desperately searching for a way to reach Gaza, seeking the answer to a question both simple and complex. How does one survive in Gaza, under siege for all these years? What is the daily life of Palestinian people under war?”
Previously, Farsi made the animated feature “The Siren” about the war between Iraq and Iran.
“I, who could still feel the distant echo of the explosion’s shockwaves ringing in my ears (…) wanted to know how the Gazans resisted all this, what they were going through… I could not find the answer in the news and media. I wanted to hear their words unmediated. I wanted to be in Gaza,” she said.
While she couldn’t travel there, she filmed their conversations.
“And so, Fatem became my eyes in Gaza and I, a window open on the world. I filmed, catching the moments offered by our video calls, what Fatem was offering, fiery and full of life. I filmed her laughs, her tears, her hopes and her depression. I followed my instinct. Without knowing beforehand where those images would lead us. Such is the beauty of cinema. The beauty of life.”
In the film, Fatem opened up about being a Palestinian in Gaza. “I’m proud of it. They’ll never be able to beat us, whatever they do. Because we have nothing to lose,” she stated.
Farsi added: “Every day, I thought about Palestinians outside Gaza, far from their families, and I wondered how they could go on living with such anguish. And for that as well, I had no answer. I told myself I had no right to fear for her, if she herself was not afraid. I clung to her strength, to her unwavering faith.”
Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip began in October 2023, in response to the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas in Southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the abduction of 251 people. 59 are believed to remain in the Gaza Strip. Since then, 51,810 deaths have been reported on the Palestinian side as of March 22, according to data released by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
