Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is a difficult watch, and not just because it presents a year in the life of a Palestinian photographer and poet in Gaza amidst constant bombardment. The film’s aesthetic is unappealing. For nearly the entire two-hour runtime, the visuals mainly consist of Farsi’s cellphone in close-up as the filmmaker FaceTimes with her subject, Fatima Hassouna. Often, the connection is poor, with the calls regularly dropping out or containing unclear audio.
This helps illustrate the separation of Gazans from the rest of the world and should be this raw and demanding. It also contrasts with Hassouna’s photos, which are featured in a few montages. Hassouna is surprisingly in good spirits in a lot of these calls, happy to be talking to Farsi, especially when the conversation is lighter with small talk or hellos to Hassouna’s family members in her vicinity or directed at Farsi’s cat. Occasionally, Hassouna points her phone’s camera out the window to capture a nearby building that’s just been attacked during the call.
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Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, the film also makes everything feel so humdrum. Sure, it drives home how this is just everyday life in Gaza now. Nothing is as effective, though, as a sequence near the end when Hassouna sends a video she took walking through the rubble of her neighborhood. This makes us wish there was more of Hassouna in her life, not just talking about it. Otherwise, it’s too focused on Farsi, as a film following a filmmaker as she contacts her subject. Why must she include so much of herself, including moments where she has to interrupt her calls to let her cat in?
It’s another in the current trend with all these documentaries about endangered journalists, where the film isn’t nearly as notable as its subject’s work. It’s fine to be a vehicle to showcase the photography and even the lives of the artists, but these intermediaries will never be as important as what’s being exhibited. I also think there’s not much here without its sad ending, which is a shame, and odd since the documentary is said to be headed to Cannes even before the tragedy occurs. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk deserves to be seen not for its own sake but for Hassouna’s.
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