Rating: NR | Runtime: 113 minutes
Release Date: September 24th, 2025 (France) / November 5th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: New Story / Kino Lorber
Director(s): Sepideh Farsi
Writer(s): Sepideh Farsi

They go without any goodbyes.

After discovering the Israelis won’t let anyone from the outside world into Gaza, director Sepideh Farsi must change course as far as how to expose the harrowing stories happening within the city. A mutual friend connects her with photojournalist and poet Fatima Hassouna via FaceTime and what transpires is an almost year-long correspondence over video calls, texts, and photographs wherein the only constant is Fatima’s smile. Because even as a cloud of depression sets in with ever worsening conditions, she refuses to lose hope.

Almost everything on-screen throughout Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a screen filmed by Farsi with another screen. The calls to Fatima and snippets of television news reports are always one step removed to ensure we understand just how unplanned and without resources this project proves. Neither woman knew where things would go or even what might come of their blossoming friendship. So, there was no time to professionally record screens. No time to even hire a translator to allow Fatima the ability to explain her situation in Arabic.

Whereas it was easy to question this fact early on due to the disparity between Fatima fighting for her life in different shelters while bombs dropped around her and Farsi traveling the world and playing with her cat while devastating news broke on the TV, that gulf is kind of the point. Both women speak to it too with Farsi admitting her sense of helplessness when reconciling how her life is largely unchanged by Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and Fatima assuring her that this time together and the platform provided are help enough.

You also get the sense that Farsi’s escapades become a sort of reprieve for Fatima. This is a twenty-four-year-old woman who’s never left “the box” of land Israel has imprisoned her within. A talented and happy soul who craves the beauty and culture of cities like Tehran and Rome so much so that she dreams of one day visiting them all before returning to Gaza to share her experiences. Her face therefore lights up whenever Farsi tells her about her latest stop. Fatima gets to vicariously live her fantasies through her cellphone screen.

In return, she sends Farsi a collection of her photographs depicting the destruction surrounding her as well as the faces of the men, women, and children who continue to endure despite it. These images are the only ones placed directly in front of our eyes with full clarity and color—no pixelated internet connections, scratched and dusty glass, or shaky hands. They, along with a poem and brief song, not only show us what Israel has desperately tried to keep from our eyes, but also reveal the artistry, empathy, and vitality of Palestinian life.

We also receive a first-hand account of her conditions as months pass and food depletes. Fatima is able to stay at a friend’s house at the start to be farther from the chaos and utilize marginally better internet before eventually needing to return to her own partially collapsed home and/or shelters to protect herself as best she can. Discussions are initially brimming with laughter as Fatima accepts her plight in a way that doesn’t prevent her from still treating every breath as a gift, but not even her wealth of optimism can keep dark thoughts at bay.

And that’s yet another piece to this puzzle wherein Farsi’s calls become a therapy session for Fatima too. Not because the former is qualified to offer any advice, but because her presence provides a vessel for the latter to express her emotions, sorrows, and desires. Fatima can tell Farsi things she cannot tell family and friends whose own lives are falling apart too. I think the most telling part as far as exposing the conditions Israel has fostered is Fatima admitting she has no real clue when the world looks like outside Gaza’s borders.

This point is driven home further by her brother constantly coming into frame during one session—not to inject himself into the movie, but to look at Farsi because he’s never seen a “European” woman before (the director left Iran for France when she was eighteen for political reasons). As Fatima relays: they were happy with what little their lives were allowed to possess, so why is Israel now trying to take that away too? Something as simple as an outsider talking to them live as opposed to through a movie shouldn’t be seen as profound.

It’s why films like Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk and many others the past few years are important to humanize people that those in power have told us to fear. These aren’t terrorists or even soldiers. They’re simply Palestinians trying to survive while everything they’ve ever known is stolen. They are humans being used as pawns to prop up Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to eradicate them to his allies. Brave citizens who believe God has a plan and therefore willingly stay to remind everyone who’s watching that this will forever be their home.

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Fatima Hassouna in PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK; courtesy of Kino Lorber.