TEHRAN – The documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” directed by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi about life in Gaza during the Israeli military actions, won the Best Documentary award at France’s 31st Lumière Awards in Paris on Sunday.

The 112-minute France/Palestine film is the filmmaker’s response to the massacre of Palestinians by the Zionists, ISNA reported.

Farsi thinks that a miracle happened when she met the 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna. It was in April 2024 that the director first contacted her and recorded visually the conversation that they had when using smartphones.

Farsi was in Cairo at the time and she had heard of Fatima through a Palestinian refugee who, knowing that Farsi was deeply concerned about the situation in Gaza and had been unable to get permission to go there, had suggested that she should contact Fatima, who was living with her family in the Tuffah quarter of Gaza City.

Once in touch through these video calls, the two women quickly established a strong rapport regardless of their difference in age (Farsi had been born in 1965) and they would speak regularly in this way, with Farsi calling up Fatima from wherever she happened to be (she did this from countries as far apart as France, Italy, and Canada).

What this film gives the viewers is a whole set of conversations just as they occurred, which means that the audience witnesses cut-offs and reconnections and sometimes suffers visual distortions. These talks are the heart of the film, and while it is unconventional for a film to rely so heavily on material that can only show us people conversing through the images of them on their phones, this limitation adds to the sense of this being an unusually personal and intimate work.

The majority of the talks took place between April and October 2024, but the last one was on April 15, 2025. That was when Farsi was able to inform Fatima that the film, which she had made out of their conversations, had been selected for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The very next day, the Israelis would drop a bomb that killed Fatima and 10 members of her family. That information is given in a written statement at the film’s close.

In their final exchange, Hassouna told Farsi: “I'll come to Cannes, but I have to return to Gaza. I don't want to leave”.

An investigation by UK research group Forensic Architecture concluded Hassouna's death was the result of a targeted attack – the missiles dropped by the Israeli military had “specifically targeted the Hassouna family’s apartment on Floor 2” of the five-floor building. The Israel Defense Forces stated they targeted “a Hamas member involved in attacks against Israeli soldiers,” claiming use of precision weapons. Sepideh Farsi rejected this justification, stating: “I know the whole family. It's nonsense”.

Fatima Hassouna (1999-2025) was a Palestinian photojournalist whose work documented civilian life during the Gaza war. She gained international recognition for her visceral documentation of war impacts.

Hassouna was born in Gaza City and graduated with a multimedia degree from the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza. She began documenting life in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 attacks.

Israel's offensive in Gaza, launched in response to the Palestinian militant group Hamas's attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and laid waste to swathes of territory.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed and 169,679 others injured in Gaza, with nearly a third of the dead under the age of 18, according to Gaza health authorities.

With a current population of about 2.1 million, more than 10% of Gaza’s residents have been killed or wounded.

Around 193,000 buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, according to an analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre of the latest figures from July. About 213 hospitals and 1,029 schools have been targeted.

Only about 18% of the Gaza Strip is not now subject to displacement orders or located within militarized zones, according to the United Nations. Many Palestinians have been displaced multiple times.

Israel has urged Gaza City residents to head south. But conditions in southern Gaza are dire, with families crammed into makeshift tents and overstretched services trying to cope with new arrivals.

After two years of almost nonstop bombardment, Israel’s genocidal war has left the Gaza Strip in ruins, with international organizations and local monitors documenting mass casualties, widespread destruction, famine, and the collapse of basic infrastructure.

As one of the few local journalists able to document the war after Israel banned foreign reporters from Gaza, Hassouna chronicled forced civilian evacuations under Israeli military orders; destruction of infrastructure from airstrikes; civilian casualties and funeral rituals; and moments of resilience, including children playing in ruins.

On April 15, 2025, she posted her final Instagram story showing a Gaza sunset with the caption: “It's the first sunset in a long time”.

In “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” she became the director’s eyes in Gaza, where she resisted while documenting the war, and Farsi became a link between her and the world, from her “Gaza prison,” as she named it.

Hassouna had previously written on social media, “If I die, I want a loud death”. She was one of at least 260 media professionals killed in Gaza by Israel, according to the UN.

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