The title Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk comes from a phrase often used by Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who is at the centre of Iranian director Sepideh Farsi’s new documentary. For Fatima, it captured the reality of moving through Gaza, where life could be cut short at any moment.

Farsi, an Iranian filmmaker based in France, first heard about Fatima in Cairo in April 2024, when a man who had just left Gaza described her as a, “young, brilliant and talented photographer.” Having been denied entry to Rafah herself, Farsi began speaking with Fatima through a series of long video calls that same month.

Now premiering in the UK at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is accompanied by Farsi herself. I had the opportunity to meet her at The Caledonian and sit down to discuss the making of this remarkable film.

The format of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is quite remarkable for its rawness. It is not a mere recording of the conversations they had, but a series of videos where Farsi filmed her phone screen rather than simply recording the calls. It was, she says, a conscious decision. “Because it’s first something very fragile.” She explains. “It allows you to feel the fragileness of the connection of the image, rather than a just a recording of the screen.

“It allowed me to frame, to reframe in a more dynamic way, and sometimes go closer, but in a more instinctive, intuitive way, rather than either just recording, or also even filming the phone with a high-res, high-end camera which I could have done, but I chose to use a telephone to film the text.

“I chose to use a telephone, in fact, to remain very low-key in terms of the image resolution and sound, to match the, you know, the discrepancy of the connection and the difficulties we had to connect.”

At the same time, she explains the decision she made to compulsively film news coverage. “From the beginning. In fact, I had been recording TV news from three sources mainly, because to me, it kind of represented the…” She pauses, then clarifies, “For a long, long time, Al Jazeera was the only channel working with the Palestinians, AG Plus and Al Jazeera. So, for me it was important to date the film historically, to the events in it, and show also what the media, the outside media was giving about, or how they were covering the issue.”

Instead of downloading clips, she wanted her own presence to remain visible. “I have tons of hours of footage. I was filming compulsively. But then I had to make a choice, of course. And same thing goes for that kind of filming. Because instead of downloading the videos from the internet, I had decided to film it myself, to leave my footprints in the image, in terms of how I frame, I zoom on the mouth, all of that you see in the film was done on the spot while I’m filming. Nothing was added in post-production.”

We also talked about how their conversations work. In the film, there are so many exchanges, and most of them feel very spontaneous. Much of the film unfolds through her conversations with Hassouna. Some of the questions, she says, were thought about in advance, but many emerged from the moment.

“Of course, I did think about what I wanted to ask her, but a lot of it was also spontaneous because I would connect and I wanted to know how she was and what she ate and how the situation was. So, these things were not planned. And then part of the questions came also because of what happened before. Like, I would hear news about the arrest warrant issued for Netanyahu. So, obviously, I would talk to her about that.

“So, some of the questions originated from the events that were happening and how the conflict was unfolding. Some were linked to the daily basis of her life or of my life sometimes because I would tell her about what I was doing, where I was traveling, and then she would ask me questions. So, it was a mixture of those.”

But it doesn’t mean that all the conversations they had were light-hearted. There were also many serious exchanges on the attack, on the election in Gaza, and moments of genuine exchange. “And the 7th of October conversation came in a bit later, after a few months of knowing her. First of all because it is a very delicate question. I needed to know her. I didn’t want to ask her out of the blue about this. And also, I did not want her to make a statement.

“This was not the point. I wanted to know how she felt about it. My idea throughout the film and my goal was to get as close as possible to her feelings, to how she felt and how you live or survive under the bombs. I wanted to reach, I try to touch that moment when the war started and see if they realised how Palestinians in Gaza, or if they did and when, that their whole world was decoupled.”

She adds softly: “Because I have some experience of that as an Iranian, and so I wanted to, you know. Get there.”

She also explained how the editing process worked with so much raw material. “Well, I started editing very quickly. So, about perhaps 10 days after I started filming I already started to edit some of the conversations. So, the first attempt was to gather blocks of the conversations that seemed important to me. I think the second conversation we have she says, ‘You’re going to suffer with me,’ that’s the first one. I edited it. I did a short, rough cut of that, about seven or eight minutes long. And then I started making a timeline, only made of conversations. And then I added the news bits and other images.

“And this went on for quite a few months alone by myself. And at some point, I had a version, actually, last summer all ready. It was very different from the present film, of course. So, I kept editing and shooting, towards the end of Autumn, November. It was very difficult to keep both. It was like a marathon, like a triathlon, you know? Like swimming, running, biking. It was hard physically to do all of it at the same time. So, I kept shooting, but I decided to end the editing process until a certain date. And not to include the footage after a certain date. So, from December onwards, in order to be able to finish a structure.

“And then I called an advisor, Farahnaz Sharifi, who’s a great Iranian editor and great director, and I asked her for her help. And so, she helped me towards the end of the editing to kind of purify the line and finish the structure.”

And since this is still an ongoing event, I asked her to tell me more about when she decided to stop collecting footage. “Well, it was at that moment when they killed her friend, Mahasan. And there was a change in her attitude. She went through a moment of despair. That’s what we see at the end of the film. Also, because of the loss of that friend who was very young and she was like her. Because she’d already lost family members. But it hadn’t been so traumatic, perhaps.

“This was horrible. They had been to a wedding together. So, she sent me a message in the evening saying, ‘Yeah, we just went to a wedding. I haven’t had fun for a long time.’ And they were together. So, these three friends. One of them is still alive. And then Fatima and Mahasan. And I said, ‘Oh, it’s cool. I mean, but it’s amazing. A wedding in the war. But it’s good. I like it. And I’m glad you had fun.’ And two hours later, she sent me a message that her friend was killed. It is so shocking. And so, from that moment was kind of a turning point. And I felt that I had enough material to raise what I wanted to say and finish the film. That’s the moment when I decided not to do the rest. Only after her killing, of course, I included our last conversation.”

Farsi herself was born into a politically active, left-wing family in Iran. She became an activist at a young age, was imprisoned by the regime at the time, and later left for Paris in 1984. She is not afraid of asking Fatima questions that might challenge both her and the audience. Generational and cultural differences often surfaced in their exchanges.

“I thought it was important to address some issues, precisely because I’m an Iranian, precisely because I’m of a generation who has had a different experience through the revolution in ’78 and afterwards and have been fighting for women’s rights. And I think the great thing between us was that despite the generational gap and despite the difference in our points of views with Fatima… I mean, I talk openly about the fact that I was not a believer, I didn’t believe in God, I was in a friendly manner kind of teasing her, like ‘Why don’t you ask God why?’

“Because I really do think that if there is this God there, and I do accept, of course, and respect that people believe in God, but I don’t. And I used to talk about it openly with her, and I think it was one of the beauties of our relationship that she was very open to me and I at the same time wouldn’t hide my point of view, not to shock her, you know.”

She continues: “And hijab and veil, I mean, for women, Muslim women, and the way we’ve lived in Iran under this discrimination for 46 years. And it’s not only the veil, it’s many other aspects. I thought it was important that she knows about it, she learns about it, because Gaza beyond the present horror and the past wars and the Nakba, right now it is a very, I would say traditional ,society. In certain ways, in regards to women’s rights. So I thought for a person like her, because she was an amazing woman, talented, very open and wanted to live, and had many desires and all, and I thought she deserved to get a glance or a glimpse at different ways of being that a woman could have. I mean, you have this moment which I love, when her brother is peeking at you. And I love this, because it shows how much they were cut off from the rest of the world, you know, and more so as women.”

There was a paradox too, she noticed, in the society in Gaza. “Although it’s interesting, there is a paradox there, because Fatima was the eldest in her family. She was the highest educated as a girl, more than her brothers. Perhaps because she was more talented. But I mean, her parents loved her and she was not married. It was, because usually girls get married very early. And she was about to get married. She got engaged, actually, but it couldn’t happen. But she was very adamant about her career, what she wanted to say. She was writing, she was singing, you know. So, there is this paradox. It is a traditional society, but at the same time, women are very strong. In the same way as in Iran, we have many discrimination problems, but Iranian women are very strong.”

We talked, too, about the women they both admired. “And so, this was one of the conversations. And we talked about Virginia Woolf. You’ve seen that, it’s in the film. I talked to her about Lee Miller, for instance, as a photographer. And she didn’t know Lee as a war photographer. She said, ‘Buy me a book of Lee.’ And I got the book for her. And I was going to give it to her when we met. We had many conversations about women who were strong and how it meant to be a woman. Part of it is in the film. And I think it’s important also because I’m not a European. I’m Iranian, you know.”

Looking back, she reflects on how their friendship shaped them both. “I can’t say exactly because I think it opened doors for her to think differently about what she could do, perhaps, beyond or after the war. And I guess it did bring joy to her because she was smiling every time we connected. And I think it was partially because she was like that. But it was also partially because it was a sunbeam in her daily life under the bombs to be connected to the outside world through me. That was kind of a window. And for me, certainly, it was great joy. I did get a sense of, you know, what resilience and resistance means beyond anything I knew until then. And it’s a great loss. It really changed my life in a sense. I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next, what film, it makes everything relative. And also, all that Palestinians are enduring makes our little daily problems, you know, of a broken nail or, I don’t know, bad weather, very relative compared to the horror that they’re living through, the genocide.”

It is a morning in August in Edinburgh, with the city alive with festivals and visitors from around the world. Yet Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk stands apart: a beautiful work about resistance, genuine friendship, and the power of the everyday in Gaza — a film that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Put Your Soul In Your Hand and Walk is in cinemas from Fri 22 Aug 2025