Cannes Selects Film on Gaza Photographer Fatma Hassona; A Day Later, She’s Killed in Israeli Strike

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Fatma Hassona was a 25-year-old photographer and artist from Gaza who documented the devastating impacts on Israel’s war on Gaza. She’s also the subject of a new documentary called Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. On Wednesday morning, Fatma was killed along with at least nine members of her family in an Israeli airstrike on her home in northern Gaza. Fatma was killed a day after the documentary was accepted at the Cannes Film Festival. This is part of the trailer of the film.

SEPIDEH FARSI: Where are you now?

FATMA HASSONA: I’m in north Gaza.

This is my neighborhood. No one lives here or here or there or there. There’s no one.

SEPIDEH FARSI: When the war started on October 7th, I was traveling around the world presenting my last film that talks about a war I’ve personally experienced as a teenager in Iran. I decided to go to Cairo in order to cross through Rafah, but I couldn’t, because all the roads to Gaza were blocked. Instead, I started filming Palestinian refugees who were just arriving from Gaza. Through one of them, I came to know Fatem.

FATMA HASSONA: I’m a photographer.

SEPIDEH FARSI: Yes, I saw. I saw your photos.

Meeting her was like a mirror held in front of me that made me realize how much both our lives are conditioned by walls and wars.

AMY GOODMAN: Part of the trailer of the new documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.

We’re joined now by the film’s director, Sepideh Farsi, award-winning Iranian filmmaker, who’s speaking to us from Paris.

Sepideh, welcome to Democracy Now! Our deepest condolences on the death of Fatma, Fatma Hassona, who you were introducing the world to even further in this new documentary. Can you tell us who she was, what she did and how she died?

SEPIDEH FARSI: Hi, Amy.

I’m so devastated. It’s really hard to — I can’t believe she’s gone. I don’t know how to talk. I met her a year ago, as you heard in the trailer. Sorry. And —

AMY GOODMAN: Take your time. I know how unbelievably, horrifyingly difficult this is. As I watched your documentary, I mean, the time you have spent with her on — over Zoom, trying to talk, reconnect, reconnect, the fear every single time you reached out to her that this might be the last conversation is just — that is the feeling you have throughout this documentary, is: Will Sepideh reach her again? And what an unbelievably radiant smile, Fatma, in describing the most difficult situations that her family was in and the number of people that have died around her, that is what infuses the entire documentary.

SEPIDEH FARSI: Yes, she was exactly as you described her, Amy, a solar person, you know, radiating, and very brave, resilient, young also, hopeful, sometimes in despair, but generally very strong, optimistic and very — with huge integrity.

Of course, throughout that year, it was a year of connections on and off, and very often, as much as we could. Many times I feared for her life. Every day I wrote to her, if I could not — if she couldn’t connect, at least we would exchange some text and audio messages and photos, anything we could. And most of the time we would connect to talk, and I would film the video calls. And yes, every day and every night, I feared for her life.

And somehow, by the end of this period and when the selection was announced and I had started the — you know, I told her two days ago, just a day before she left us, she was killed, that the film was selected. She was immensely glad. I said, “Do you accept to come?” She said, “Yes, on the condition that I go back to Gaza afterwards. I want to be there. The Israeli occupation wants us to leave. I do not want to leave. I will keep my land and my house, like the other Palestinians.” But we were trying to get her out at least for the film’s presentation. And a day after, I just learned the news. You know, I can’t believe it. I can’t tell you how devastated I am. And we lost a great person.

AMY GOODMAN: Cannes put out a statement. Is it pronounced “acid,” the ACID team?

SEPIDEH FARSI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: That said about Fatma Hassona, after she was killed, “Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite the bombs, mourning, and hunger. We heard her story, we rejoiced at each of her appearances to see her alive, we feared for her,” they said.

So, if you can tell us how she came to pick up her camera? And one of the — just so poignant through this documentary is we meet, one by one — even your surprise — in meeting her family members, who happen to be in the space she’s in wherever she manages to connect to you. We meet her brother. We meet her dad. We look at them looking at you, who is uncovered, a woman, speaking to her in Paris or wherever you are. But she, all her life, has only been in Gaza.

SEPIDEH FARSI: Yes, exactly. This was a big thing for me also and for her. I shared it with her in the sense that I had many moments of doubt, of feeling guilty, of doubting whether or not I should, you know, exchange and share with her all of my travels and my adventures and what I was up to. And at some point, I thought that it was my way of contributing to giving her something she didn’t know yet, because she never had a chance to be out of Gaza.

And the first time we met, she was telling me, “Oh, you’re from Iran. One of the cities I would love to see is Tehran.” And I told her, “I cannot go back to Tehran myself.” And she’s like, “Why?” I said, “Because of political reasons.” It was such an absurdity to her. She couldn’t even imagine how other people than Palestinians could be locked out of their country, whereas these people are locked in their country and cannot go out. I mean, it was such a contrast between what I was living and she was living.

And we put up with it, and we built the whole film and our relationship around this discrepancy of our experiences. And I think that was one of the points that was very rich in our exchanges, that I do not believe in God, and she did, and I am in exile, and she was stuck in her country. And so, it was even more, you know, moving, I think, for me, and, I believe, for her, as well.

The first time I told her, “You’re so young. You’re my daughter’s age,” and she said, “Oh, you could be my mother!” You know, it’s like — and she was so spontaneous, so generous and so systematic in her documenting the genocide also and in her vision of what they were going through, such a clarity, despite her young age, or because of her young age, I don’t know, maybe.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing her photographs, by the way, as we talk to you. I want to ask you how you met, but can you tell us how she died, first, this week?

SEPIDEH FARSI: I still keep asking myself the question whether there was a link between the film selection in Cannes and a day later, just a day later, her house being hit. Well, the house was hit by a bomb. People say it was targeted. I do believe that it could be the case, given the high number of the journalists and photographers in Gaza who have been killed by the Israeli army. So, I think this one time, it could be one of these cases.

Of course, I do not know more than that. I would love to — an investigation to be done to find out, because she was so dear to me and to many of us. But the fact is that the bomb was launched on her house, and the house, the whole house, was destroyed. She and nine other members of her family, including all those whom I knew, died. I’m trying to learn. It might be that her parents or one of the two parents are still alive, badly injured. I’m still looking for news. I do not know. But for sure the number of deaths is 10, and the injuries, 11. And I will never know, I think, until we do an investigation, why that house was hit.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Sepideh, how did you meet Fatma?

SEPIDEH FARSI: As I explain in the trailer and the beginning of the film, at some point touring the world with my previous film, the animation, The Siren, I was following the news of the war, of course, on Gaza, and to begin with, October 7, and then all that unfolded afterwards. And a piece of that puzzle was missing.

Well, you see my cat, who’s in the film. Sorry. She’s always in the image.

But a piece of the puzzle was missing for me, and that was the Palestinian point of view and the Palestinian narrative. And at some point, it became so unbearable to me that I decided to go to Gaza, through Rafah. So I went to Cairo to pass through, but it was already too late. Plus, I have a French passport, born in Iran. It was not possible. And so, I started working with Palestinian refugees in Cairo, and through one of them I was introduced to Fatma online, and that’s how it started. And it was immediate. Connection was immediate.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about why she first picked up this camera, I mean, unbelievably dangerous. She has died with so many members of her family, but other members of her family, like her grandfather, her uncle, also died while she was alive in this last year and a half.

SEPIDEH FARSI: I think part of the Palestinian destiny or the Gazawi destiny is that they knew there is this fatality. I would refuse to accept it, but I think they had this — you know, when she says in the film, she says, “They cannot defeat us, because we have nothing to lose,” it’s so enormous to hear. It takes time to take it in and to realize what she means. Now I realize what she’s meaning. I mean, of course, you have your life to lose, but I think there is this fatality they are prepared for. So, yes, she had lost 13 members of her family, if I remember correctly, in January 2024 already. She told me about them one by one. She named them and their ages and all, in the film several times.

And despite that, she would not give in, give up taking photos and documenting. And that was essential to her, writing also, because she was also a poet, as you said. But photography, I think, was her main and most serious activity. I did ask her whether she would like to continue music, because she also sang, and writing, and she said, “No, photography is the most important for me.” And she herself described her camera as a gun. She said, “You know, like the sniper who ups the gun and shoots, I lift my camera, and I shoot a photo. And it is essential to document this war and the genocide.” And she kept saying that all the time. So, I think it was very important to her that her photos and her work generally, texts also, would remain and be relayed and shared with larger audiences. And that’s what I will be trying to do by all means.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have her poem in front of you that you could read?

SEPIDEH FARSI: I can find it. Just a second.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Sepideh Farsi, the award-winning Iranian filmmaker. She’s based in Paris. Her new documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk features Fatma Hassona, who died this week. She told Fatma, the day before she died in an Israeli airstrike with, it’s believed, nine members of her family, that the film had just been accepted at the Cannes Film Festival, and she wanted her to be there. Did you find the film — the poem?

SEPIDEH FARSI: Yes. This is one of her poems, “The Man Who Wore His Eyes.”

I don’t have a CV
To recognize two eyes
Mysterious
And I believe
I do not have a story
One clear for a stranger
To believe it
And he believes
I have no physical characteristics
Complete
To fly
Outside of this gravity
And I believe

Maybe I’m ushering in my death
Now
Before the person standing in front of me lifts
His sharp sniper rifle
And it ends
And I’m done
Silence

Are you a fish?
I did not answer when the sea asked me
I didn’t know where these crows came from
And pounced on my flesh
Would it have seemed logical
If I said yes
Let these crows pounce
At the end
On a fish

She crossed
And I did not cross
My death crossed me
And a sharp sniper bullet
I became an angel
For a city
Huge
Bigger than my dreams
Bigger than this city
I became poetry saint —

AMY GOODMAN: Sepideh, we’re ending the show. I want to thank you so much. We’ll post the poem online. Sepideh Farsi, the award-winning — 

SEPIDEH FARSI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — documentary filmmaker. Fatma Hassona, the subject of her film, has been killed.