When we think of cinema, we think of the visuals first. It’s a visual medium, after all, and those big, awe-inspiring scenes are usually what draw emotion out of an audience, and what draws them to the theater in the first place.
But Iranian director Sepideh Farsi is used to working sparingly. She shot her first documentary, “Tehran Without Permission,” on the streets of Tehran with a Nokia camera phone because of Iran’s restrictions on shooting. And now, with “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” Farsi has proven once again that powerful emotion doesn’t have to stem from big, sweeping visuals. It can come from something as simple as an iPhone.
“Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” features a series of interviews between Farsi and Fatma Hassona, a Palestinian photojournalist living in Gaza who had been steadily documenting life in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack. After Hamas attacked Israel, Farsi decided she wanted to try and document the ensuing war in Gaza. She was held up in Egypt, but a refugee told her she should speak with Fatma. The two women never met in person, their friendship developing entirely over the phone.
The first conversation we see between them is dated April 24, 2024. The documentary covers a year of conversations between the two women, broken up by montages of Fatma’s pictures on the ground and news reels about the war in Gaza. It offers a juxtaposition of news coverage and someone’s actual, lived experience – the difference between watching anchors and journalists talk about conflict, and someone living through what human rights organizations have called genocide.
It sounds cliche, but the first thing you notice about Fatma is her smile. Early on in the documentary, it feels like she constantly has a smile on her face, even when speaking bluntly about the atrocities she and her family have faced, including Israeli airstrikes and growing hunger. “I feel weird when you describe this to me with a smile,” Farsi says to Fatma. But it takes a lot to tear that smile from her face.
Over the course of the film, the women talk about their experiences with war and oppression (When she was a teenager, Farsi spent months in prison in Iran for her activism against the regime). But they also talk about their hopes and dreams, their feelings about their identity, and their families. Both of the women share a sense of strength, although Farsi, older than Fatma, has a bit more weathered realism in her outlook on the world. When Fatma says she believes that suffering must happen for a reason – that there must be meaning behind all this madness – after a beat, Farsi responds: “I don’t know if I agree with you.”
Because of the way Farsi films her conversations with Fatma – using another phone to film her on FaceTime, putting the audience directly in front of Fatma’s face – her suffering feels closer and more intimate than ever. As the destruction around Fatma becomes worse and the death toll rises, the moments where Farsi is waiting for her to answer the phone tremble with dread. Whenever Fatma’s connection is lost and her audio or video drops out – which happens frequently – your heart clenches. You’ve gotten to know Fatma, just as Farsi has – her pride in being from Gaza, her thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict, her thoughts about wearing a hijab, her love for the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.” By putting the audience in her own perspective, Farsi leaves them with no choice but to look Fatma directly in the eye.
At its core, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is a film about the toll that war takes on a person. Fatma never loses her smile, but it does become less frequent and more distant as the film rages on. She becomes more tired as food becomes more scarce, and she finally begins to cry in front of Farsi at difficult points. Toward the beginning of the film, she tells Farsi that her biggest dream is to travel, and that she would love to see the Vatican one day. Later, she says that her only dream is to eat chicken again. This is what oppression does – breaks down people’s hopes and dreams until all that’s left is the wish for survival.
Correction: this article has been corrected with the proper spelling of Fatma Hassona’s last name.