Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk review – shattering memorial to Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona

Sepideh Farsi’s devastating documentary follows Hassona through a year of video calls before a fate that, though well known, is too bitter to bearThe rule is this: don’t spoil movies by giving away the ending, even if the events depicted are part of the historical record. But in the case of this dev

Sepideh Farsi’s devastating documentary follows Hassona through a year of video calls before a fate that, though well known, is too bitter to bear

The rule is this: don’t spoil movies by giving away the ending, even if the events depicted are part of the historical record. But in the case of this devastating documentary, knowing what’s coming at the end is a radical enhancement, a chilling message from the movie’s future that makes you read everything differently.

So here’s the big reveal: Fatma Hassona, the young Palestinian woman in this film, to whom director Sepideh Farsi talks to via video calls over nearly a year, is now dead, killed on 16 April by an Israeli airstrike along with several members of her family. In fact, the last we see of Hassona is her being told by Farsi that the film we’ve just been watching will be shown at the Cannes film festival. This prompts a conversation about whether Hassona will attend the premiere (“Of course!” she says, optimistically) and perhaps use that trip as an opportunity to leave Gaza for good. She demurs politely, insisting that Gaza is her home even if everything and everyone is destroyed.