Her name was Fatma Hassona – or Fatem, for her relatives. She was 25 years old, a camera for all weapons, and an inner light that seemed to resist the perpetual night of Gaza. In just a few months, this young woman, a graduate in multimedia of the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, has become one of the most striking figures of Palestinian photojournalism. The Cannes 2025 Cannes Festival, through the ACID selection, unveiled on April 15, was about to make its gaze discover the world, through the documentary film “Put your soul on your hand and walk” by Sepideh Farsi. Since April 16, this film has become a posthumous tribute, transformed by the announcement of his death.
Because that day, an Israeli strike targeted the family building of Fatma Hassona in the Al-Touffah district of Gaza. She perished there, with ten members of her family. With her died out a singular, courageous, essential voice – but her image continues to fix, impassive and lucid.
A life between poetry, commitment and engagement
Apart from her war reports, Fatma Hassona’s life was animated by other impulses. She had just engaged, last December. She wrote poetry, organized writing workshops for children, and shared with them tenacious faith in expression as a refuge. Its existence was crossed by a total commitment, without compromise. She had accepted the invitation of ACID to come to Cannes, while specifying: ” I will never leave Gaza“, According to SepideH Farsi. However, she knew that she risked her life every day.
She had even formulated her last wishes, in an overwhelming declaration reported by the AJ+ media:
“” If I die, I want it to be a thunderous death. I want the whole world to hear about my death. I want her to have an impact that does not fade over time. I want images that cannot be buried in space or time. »»
Gaza as a scene of reality
Since October 7, 2023, Fatma Hassona has relentlessly photographed life in Gaza. His clichés, taken up to man, said emergency, chaos, but also dignity. She knew that her images, shared on social networks and relayed by international media, were often the only visual testimonies of everyday life in this hermetic enclave to foreign journalists. She photographed the ruins, the forced evacuations, the destruction of infrastructure, the burials, but also the children playing among the ruins, the smiles, the moments of resistance, the persistent light in the gaze of the survivors.
His work was not a documentary in the cold sense of the term: it was a writing. Each image, each framing wore his voice, his anger, his hope. It was inhabited by the idea that testifying was a political act, a way of existing. As she wrote in her poem The Man Who Wore His Eyes.
Rods, late but precious recognition
It was through the film of Seidideh Farsi that the world of cinema discovered Fatma Hassona. The documentary Put your soul on your hand and walk selected by ACID for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Largely rested on the images shot in video calls between the director and the young Gazaouie. These exchanges, where confidences, laughter, tears and silences were mixed, offered intimate access to the reality of Gaza.
Sepideh Farsi, who had met Fatem through a joint friend in Cairo, then sought to understand daily life in a permanent blockade city. She had found, in Fatma, a look and a voice that is both clear and overwhelming. She filmed it remotely, listened to, accompanied. And when the news of her death fell, she wrote, in a tribute relayed by Release and by acid:
“” It is no longer the same film that we are going to present. We must be worthy of its light.»»
In Cannes, the screening of the film will now have a completely different resonance. It will be imprint of emotion, anger, tribute. The film has become a mausoleum, a sensitive archive, a manifesto for memory.
Sepideh Farsi also expressed, in an interview for Variety The same day of the announcement of the death, how much the film she was preparing to present in Cannes had now changed her meaning. She highlighted the importance for film festivals not to hide behind a false neutrality:
“” I do not understand this idea that “festivals should not be political”. How can we separate the policy of life? And who traces this border? What I hope is that festivals will go beyond this false posture of “We are only artistical”. I hope with all my heart that something big will happen to her, for her voice, and for all that we have lost with her . »»
She also entrusted the immediate impact of Fatma’s death on the perception of the film:
“” The end was still recently said that she was alive in Gaza, that she continued to take photos. Now the people who will see the film will know that she is dead, and how she died. Obviously, this will no longer have the same impact at all. »»
Sepideh Farsi added, moved, that she had established a strong and authentic relationship with Fatma:
“” She constantly said to me: “I miss you.” We had built something very strong. For the past year, I called this person who lived so far, we were talking about everything, we were not always agree. There was something deeply true between us. I still find it hard to believe that she is no longer there. »»
An disappearance impossible to erase
Since the announcement of his death, tributes have flocked, from social networks to the largest cinemas. Filmmakers from around the world salute his courage. His images are shared, commented on, translated. Its history becomes that of a whole generation of Palestinian artists whose work now constitutes a rampart against oblivion.
The text published by ACID on the day of his death sums up the scope of this disappearance.
Fatma Hassona had hoped that her death did not go unnoticed. She had asked for images impossible to erase. This is what she left: images that we do not forget, a look that still crosses us, a voice that we even hear in silence.
Here is the tribute that Acid and Sepideh Farsi paid him:
“Fatma Hassona, Gaza’s eyes” By septusi farsi:
“We, filmmakers and members of the ACID team, met Fatma Hassona by discovering the film of Sepideh Farsi” Put your soul on your hand and walk »As part of our Cannes programming. Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: testify, photograph Gaza, distribute food despite the bombs, mourning and hunger. We listened to her story, we rejoiced each appearance of her to see her alive, we were afraid for her. Yesterday, we learned with fright that an Israeli missile had targeted his building, killing Fatem and his family.
We watched and programmed a film in which the vital force of this young woman appeared as a miracle. It is no longer the same film that we will now defend and present in all theaters, starting with Cannes. We must be worthy of his light, all, filmmakers as spectators.
Here we share some extracts from the words of Sepideh Farsi about Fatem, published inRelease::
Maybe I announce my own death
NOW
Before the one who faces me recharges
His elite sniper rifle
And that it ends
And that I end.
Silence.
These are the words of Fatma Hassona (or Fatem for her friends), extracted from a long poem entitled “The man who wore his eyes”. A poem that smells of sulfur, which already feels death, but which is also full of life, as was Fatem, until this morning when an Israeli bomb put an end to his life and that of all his family, reducing their house in ruins.
She had just turned 25. I knew it thanks to a Palestinian friend in Cairo, while I was desperately looking for a way to join Gaza, hitting myself on barred roads, looking for answers to both simple and complex questions: how do you survive Gaza, besieged for so many years? What is the daily life of the Palestinian at war? What is Israel seeking to erase in this handful of square kilometers by dint of bombs and missiles? I had just finished a film, “The siren “on another war, that between Iran and Iraq …
And so, Fatem became my eyes in Gaza, and I, a window open to the world for her. I filmed the moments offered by our video calls, which Fatem showed me, ardent, alive. I filmed his laughter, his tears, his hopes and his despair. I followed my instinct. Without knowing where these images were going to lead us. This is the beauty of cinema. This is the beauty of life.
When I learned the news yesterday, I first refused to believe it, thinking of an error, like that of a few months ago, when a family bearing the same name had perished in an Israeli attack. Incidentally, I called her, then sent him a message, then another, and yet another.
All these light lives were ground by a finger that pressed a button to drop a bomb and erase one more house in Gaza. There is no longer any doubt to have: what is happening in Gaza today is not, and has not been a response to crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 for a long time. It is a genocide perpetrated by Israel. I hold those who commit it, as well as their accomplices. And I claim justice for Fatem and for all the innocent Palestinians who have perished. »»
Neïla Driss
