“Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” Review: A Portrait of Gaza Through One Unforgettable Face

There is a long-standing tradition in American journalism—and in American cinema—of turning large, complex political issues into the stories of specific people. Rather than addressing the Holocaust in abstract terms, we follow the life of a German businessman who saved Jews from death. It may seem like a simplification, a way of reducing overwhelming historical or political realities to something more digestible. But there is an undeniable power in a personal story—something that bypasses reason and strikes directly at the emotional core.

That is precisely what happens in Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, an extraordinary documentary about Gaza that turns an immense, incomprehensible tragedy into the experience of a single human being. The approach might sound manipulative, but it isn’t. Quite the opposite. Through this one story, the film pierces even the thickest emotional armor, allowing those who normally observe global conflicts with detached cynicism to feel—perhaps for the first time—the full weight of what is happening there.

Directed by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, herself living in exile, the film is a model of restraint and resourcefulness. Apart from a handful of photographs, a few fragments from television news, and the occasional digression (at one point, the camera follows a cat that escapes the frame), Put Your Soul… consists almost entirely of poor quality video calls. We mostly see the face of one woman, and little else. Occasionally Farsi appears in a small corner window, but the image—and the story—belong to Fatma Hassona, a 24-year-old woman living in Gaza.

The film begins with Farsi recounting how, after the first Israeli bombings in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, she tried to travel to Gaza to make a film. Unable to enter, she stayed in Egypt, where exiled Palestinians suggested she contact Fatma, who lived in one of Gaza City’s most devastated neighborhoods. The film then unfolds through a series of fragmented, unstable video calls between the two women. Over the months, amid constant interruptions and failing connections, Fatma recounts her life with a mix of candor, grace, and growing exhaustion.

At first, what surprises us most is her smile. The spaces she inhabits—her home, a friend’s place, a makeshift shelter—are surrounded by destruction. Sometimes she turns the phone’s camera toward the street, showing us the ruins, the smoke, the chaos. There are deaths, explosions, more deaths. And yet she smiles. She talks about how difficult daily life has become for her and her family, but she speaks gently, with hope, waiting for the violence to end so that life might return to something like normal. But it doesn’t. As the weeks pass, the bombings intensify, and her situation grows more desperate. Still, even with her energy fading, Fatma keeps smiling and telling her story.

Fatma is also a gifted photographer, and her own images—stark, humane, piercing—are woven into the film. They remind us that her smile is not a denial of suffering but a form of resistance. Her world keeps shrinking, yet she continues to speak with dignity and clarity, trying to make her experience visible. And eventually, even she, with all her emotional resilience, must yield to the unbearable. When she does, the world collapses with her.

What makes Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk so powerful is not only its subject but its radical simplicity. By refusing the usual documentary strategies—multiple viewpoints, expert commentary, journalistic framing—Farsi builds everything around a single face, a single voice, a single existence. Context comes in small, unobtrusive doses. What matters most is Fatma’s expression, her tone, her gaze, the gradual transformation of her features as time and trauma accumulate. The viewer feels the erosion of hope almost physically: the weary smile, the distracted eyes, the mind drifting elsewhere, the will to endure slowly dissolving.

Those who wish to avoid spoilers may stop reading here.

One day after the film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival (where it screened in the parallel ACID section), Fatma and several members of her family were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The film itself partially conveys what happened, but that knowledge gives everything that came before an even greater dramatic weight, infusing it with a tragic inevitability that deepens as the minutes pass. It is worth knowing Fatma’s fate, I think, to fully grasp the meaning of what we’re watching: every word she speaks, every gesture, every flicker of emotion is charged with the knowledge of what’s to come. As we observe the subtle shifts in her face and voice, understanding what lies ahead, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk becomes more than a film. It becomes a memorial, a cry of life interrupted, and one of the most devastating cinematic documents of our time.