Latest news with #Hassona
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' Review: A Stirring Chronicle of a Gaza Journalist Who Was Killed Before Its Cannes Premiere
Sepideh Farsi's documentary 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' follows 25-year-old Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, a story of a woman under siege by constant bombing, made especially sobering by its circumstances. On April 16, 2025, just a day after the movie's Cannes Film Festival selection was announced, Hassona was killed in an Israeli airstrike, turning the film into a cinematic epitaph to a life cut far too short. Farsi takes an unusual visual approach to capturing Hassona, but one that eventually pays dividends. Using one smartphone to film another, the Iranian director creates layers of distance between the audience and her subject — or rather, mimics the actual divide between the two women — during their many WhatsApp video chats. Farsi cannot enter Gaza, and Hassona cannot leave, leaving pixelated calls with delayed audio (owing to Hassona's poor internet connection) as their only way to connect. More from Variety Elle Fanning Wipes Away Tears as Palme Buzz Builds for Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value,' Scoring Massive 15-Minute Cannes Ovation 'Sentimental Value' Review: Joachim Trier's Resonant Family Drama Treats a Beautiful Old House as the Foundation for Healing 'A Useful Ghost' Review: A Haunted Vacuum Cleaner Hoovers Up Attention in Pleasingly Particular Ghost Story There likely would have been clearer, more traditional options to shoot this footage, between the possibility of screen-recording, or perhaps using Hassona's own DSLR camera, but opting for a lo-fi mise en abyme has a dueling effect. On one hand, it keeps Hassona tragically out of reach, the way she was for Farsi during their year-long conversation, beginning in April 2024. On the other hand, the moments in which Farsi inserts Hassona's photographs on screen become all the more striking. Her pictures of Palestinian death and survival, amid the rubble of bombed buildings, reveals a soulful command of shadow, composition and focus, which stands out in stark contrast to the blurry video chats. However, the calls themselves are the crux of the movie, and prove immensely alluring despite their poor quality. Hassona, in her broken English, narrates her life and daily circumstances, from her family being starved to the danger of falling bombs as soon as she walks out the door to her dreams of one day escaping Gaza and traveling to Rome. However, despite the death and destruction around her, she delivers each bit of news and information with a radiant grin, attempting to stay positive and laugh off even the most inhumane horrors. During several calls, the audio is interrupted by choppers and drones overhead and bombs falling on neighbors' houses. At one point, she turns her camera to a pillar of smoke nearby, where a residential building had stood just moments earlier. These heart-wrenching images are given greater political context as Farsi films her laptop in between calls (or while waiting for Hassona to call back, after a call has been dropped) while news videos about Gaza and Israel play on loop. All the while, Farsi remains a subject too — a helpless observer to these events, reduced to a mere shape via her reflection in her smudged computer screen. She asks Hassona for her opinions as well, which the young photographer once again delivers with a smile, even as she unpacks her complex feelings about the larger situation. These details, however, pale in comparison to the seemingly inconsequential anecdotes Hassona narrates about her daily life, each time with a different hijab to match her outfit, or a different pair of shades or glasses. Hassona is both fashionable and immensely talented (she shares her Arabic poems and songs with Farsi), and the more we see of her over the movie's 110 minutes, the more devastating it becomes that we will never meet her, or never truly get to know her. The proximity of her killing to the Cannes Film Festival likely means that little has changed in the film, except for an added scene and acknowledgment near the end. But even so, Farsi's aesthetic approach — which could have so easily been grating — proves endearing and heartbreaking in equal measure, as a depiction of the exact manner in which a filmmaker got to know her subject intimately before her death. Despite its tragic outcome, the film proves stirring in its capacity for hope against all odds, while also placing on full display the cost of occupation, portraying the full extent of the lives and dreams dashed by war. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
LeMonde
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
Cannes Film Festival: Emotions run high at screening of documentary on photojournalist Fatma Hassona, killed in Gaza
She should have been there, but instead, Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up a photo. It was of a young woman with a radiant smile, her gentle face framed by a veil. At 8 pm in the Olympia cinema hall in Cannes, on Thursday, May 15, the audience rose as one to honor the memory of Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, also known as "Fatem." On April 16, at the age of 25, she died, along with several of her relatives, in the bombing of the building where she lived, in the Al-Touffah neighborhood, in the northern part of Gaza City. In such moments, the festival audience feels both concerned and powerless. The president of the Cannes competition jury, Juliette Binoche, paid tribute to "Fatem" during the opening ceremony on May 13. The day before, an open letter published in Vanity Fair and Libération, gathering more than 300 cinema figures (Pedro Almodovar, David Cronenberg, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Ruben Östlund, etc.), condemned the "silence" over Gaza. Hassona's name has been added to the list of some 200 journalists killed since the start of Israel's ground offensive, in retaliation for Hamas's attacks on October 7, 2023. Since that date, Hassona had been documenting daily life for the enclave's residents, which Israel prohibits foreign journalists from accessing.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Palestinian Photojournalist Fatma Hassona, Killed in Israeli Missile Strike, Remembered at Emotional Cannes Premiere of ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk'
The Cannes world premiere of Sepideh Farsi's documentary 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' turned into a moving tribute to its protagonist Fatma Hassona, who was killed by an Israeli missile just weeks earlier. An emotional Farsi fought back tears as she introduced the film and afterwards held aloft a photo of Hassona. More from Variety Eugene Jarecki on Bringing Julian Assange to Cannes With the Explosive WikiLeaks Documentary 'The Six Billion Dollar Man' Kim Novak Documentary Biopic 'Kim Novak's Vertigo' Acquired by Dogwoof (EXCLUSIVE) 'Megalopolis' Making-Of Doc 'Megadoc' Lands at Utopia One Year After Francis Ford Coppola's Self-Funded Epic Sent Cannes Into a Frenzy (EXCLUSIVE) Hassona, a 25-year photojournalist who based in Gaza, was killed with her family by an Israeli missile that targeted her building in April, just a day after the film had been selected for Cannes. In the film, it was revealed that Farsi and Hassona had spoken about the possibility of her leaving Gaza and attending the festival. On the first day of Cannes, Hassona was named in a letter signed by more than 370 industry figures that condemned her death and also criticized 'silence' from the cinema industry over Gaza. Signed by names such as Mark Ruffalo, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, Melissa Barrera, Yorgos Lanthimos, Javier Bardem, Hannah Einbinder, Pedro Almodóvar, David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Leigh, Alex Gibney, Viggo Mortensen, Cynthia Nixon, Tessa Ross and many more, the letter also called out AMPAS for its 'lack of support' for 'No Other Land' co-director Hamdan Ballal after his arrest by the Israeli army. 'We are ashamed of such passivity,' it read, concluding: 'For Fatma, for all those who die in indifference. Cinema has a duty to carry their messages, to reflect our societies. Let's act before it's too late.' After the news of Hassona's death, the ACID team put out a statement '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,' it said. '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.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
France 24
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Fatma Hassona's death in Gaza was ‘targeted' killing, film director tells Cannes
The last time Sepideh Farsi spoke to Fatma Hassona, the 25-year-old protagonist of her Gaza documentary, 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,' it was to inform her that the film would be screened in Cannes, during the world's most prestigious film festival. The next day, on April 16, Hassona, her pregnant sister and several other relatives were killed by an Israeli missile strike on their home in northern Gaza – an attack the exiled Iranian filmmaker instantly suspected may have been linked to Hassona's journalism, the film, or both. At the film's Cannes premiere on Thursday, part of the ACID sidebar that runs parallel with the main festival, an emotional Farsi told the audience she now had proof that the photojournalist had indeed been targeted. Farsi cited an investigation by Forensic Architecture, a UK-based research group that has previously investigated the West Bank killing of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. 'Two missiles fired from a drone sliced through her building and exploded on the floor where Fatma lived, as they had been programmed to do,' she said. 'It was a targeted attack.' FRANCE 24 was able to consult the report by Forensic Architecture, which states that, 'The missiles dropped by the Israeli military specifically targeted the Hassouna family's apartment on Floor 2' of the five-floor building. Contacted by Le Monde in April, the Israeli military said the strike targeted a 'Hamas operative' who was implicated in 'attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians', adding that 'precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties'. More than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the deadliest toll on record for a military conflict, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Journalists reporting from Gaza have repeatedly warned that they are being deliberately targeted – allegations denied by the Israeli army. 'My eyes in Gaza' 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' tells the story of Gaza's plight through filmed video conversations between Hassona and Farsi, offering rare insight into a war that has ravaged the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 52,000 people, most of them women and children, according to health officials. As Farsi describes, Hassona became 'my eyes in Gaza (...) fiery and full of life. I filmed her laughs, her tears, her hopes and her despair". The film's Cannes premiere drew tears and a lengthy standing ovation. This year's festival has opened against a backdrop of mounting outrage at the ongoing war, which began in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 were killed, most of them civilians, and more than 250 people were taken hostage. On the eve of the festival, 'Schindler's List' actor Ralph Fiennes and Hollywood star Richard Gere were among more than 380 figures to sign an op-ed slamming the film industry's silence over 'genocide' in Gaza. The text paid tribute to Hassona, as did Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche on the festival's opening night, which saw her read excerpts from a poem by the Palestinian photojournalist. Speaking to FRANCE 24 ahead of the festival, Farsi lamented a collective failure to confront and sanction Israel's far-right government over the ongoing war and its stated aim to expel Gaza's population. 'Just like there was no justification for what happened on October 7, nothing can justify what is happening in Gaza,' Farsi said. 'We cannot just stand by and let the massacre go on,' she added. 'What will we tell our children when they ask, 'Why did you do nothing?' We cannot pretend we didn't know.'
France 24
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Louder than bombs: Cannes screens tribute to Gaza photojournalist who refused a quiet death
Fatma Hassona had many modest hopes, only one of which was fulfilled. She asked for a 'loud death', one that would shake the world from its torpor. It has grown louder by the day. 'I don't want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group,' Hassona, a trained photographer and talented poet, wrote on social media. 'I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.' On April 16, just days before her wedding, the 25-year-old was killed in an Israeli air strike on her home in northern Gaza, along with 10 members of her family, including her pregnant sister and 10-year-old brother. She did not live to see the end of the war that has wiped out most of her beloved Gaza. Nor did she cross the walls and barbed wire that confined her to the narrow stretch of land throughout her short life. Since her death, however, outrage has rippled across the world, sparking unprecedented protests and dominating the early stages of the Cannes Film Festival. The independent ACID sidebar, which runs parallel to the festival, seldom makes Cannes headlines. But few films this year have attracted greater attention than Sepideh Farsi's documentary on Hassona, which drew tears and a lengthy standing ovation at an emotional premiere on Wednesday. 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' tells the story of Gaza's plight through filmed video conversations between Hassona and Farsi, offering rare insight into a war that has ravaged the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 52,000 people, most of them women and children, according to health officials. As Farsi describes, Hassona became 'my eyes in Gaza (...) fiery and full of life. I filmed her laughs, her tears, her hopes and her despair.' 'If we don't, who will?' 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' stems from a meeting between two women – one yearning to break out of Gaza and get a taste of the outside world, the other desperate to break into the closed-off enclave to document the atrocities under way. Farsi, who once filmed a documentary in Tehran on a mobile phone to evade a government ban, is accustomed to censorship, blackouts and danger. Gaza, a bombed-out blackhole that foreign journalists are barred from entering, presented a whole different challenge. She describes her interactions with Hassona as 'bits of sound and pixels in an ocean of disconnect' – fleeting exchanges hampered by poor connection and spread out across months of anguished wait. In between conversations, Hassona's photographs detail the scale of the destruction around her and the unfiltered gruesomeness of war. Her audio clips of bombs rumbling and jets screeching overhead highlight the risks she is willing to take. 'Gaza needs me,' Fatem, as she was known to her loved ones, explains. 'If we don't document what's happening, who will?' Hassona doesn't just document the war. Hers is an act of resistance, a dogged determination, as she puts it, to 'find some life in all this death'. Her pictures underscore the resilience of Gaza's population when all around them is rubble. 'We're living, we're laughing,' she says early in the film, her radiant smile instantly infectious. 'They cannot defeat us, because we have nothing to lose.' Scars of war 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk' covers an eight-month period starting in the spring of 2014, when the media focus gradually shifts to Israel's looming offensive on the southern city of Rafah. We see hopes of a ceasefire raised and dashed, hear of aid drying out as the Israeli army cuts off the last open checkpoint, and follow Hassona as evacuation orders force her family to move from one shelter to another. In segments from news bulletins, filmed on Farsi's television, aid workers and UN officials detail the worsening humanitarian catastrophe and the Israeli government's blatant failure to meet its obligations under international law. There are brief moments when the war takes a back seat and the two discuss other matters, such as wearing headscarves, Hassona's favourite movie ('The Shawshank Redemption') or Virginia Woolf. We hear Fatem relish her first crisps in 10 months and dream of a little chocolate. But the psychological scars become increasingly apparent as the bombing drags on, the smiles grow sparser, and Hassona opens up about her emotional numbness. The palpable horror of the war – the relentless shelling, the children going hungry, her aunt's severed head found streets away from her shattered home – she describes as the Gaza 'normal'. It is the inability to say goodbye to her loved ones that brings her to tears. 'Targeted assassination' Farsi last spoke to Hassona on April 15 to inform her that their film would be screened in Cannes. She describes the missile strike that killed the photojournalist the very next day as a 'targeted assassination'. The Israeli military has said the strike targeted Hamas, without offering details. More than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the deadliest toll on record for a military conflict, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Journalists reporting from Gaza have repeatedly warned that they are being deliberately targeted by the Israeli military. The festival in Cannes has opened against a backdrop of mounting outrage at the ongoing war, which began in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 were killed, most of them civilians, and more than 250 people were taken hostage. 'Just like there was no justification for what happened on October 7, nothing can justify what is happening in Gaza,' says Farsi, lamenting a collective failure to confront and sanction Israel's far-right government over the ongoing war and its stated aim to expel Gaza's population. 'We cannot just stand by and let the massacre go on,' she says. 'What will we tell our children when they ask, 'Why did you do nothing?' We cannot pretend we didn't know.' On the eve of the festival, 'Schindler's List' actor Ralph Fiennes and Hollywood star Richard Gere were among more than 380 figures to sign an op-ed slamming the film industry's over 'genocide' in Gaza. The text paid tribute to Hassona, as did Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche on the festival's opening night, which saw her read excerpts from a poem by the Palestinian photojournalist. 'I hoped she would be here with me so we could make some noise together,' says Farsi, who has planned tributes to Hassona and exhibitions of her work in Cannes. 'Now that she's been taken away from us, I will do what I can with this film, her pictures, her poems and her words.'
