‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’ review: Witnessing each other’s humanity

Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk shows how a deeply human connection can be formed in one of the darkest times in global history.

One of the most difficult aspects of the hyperconnected world in which we live is the fact that algorithms and social media feeds present us with horrific footage of wars in fragments that compress lives into notifications, infographics, statistics, and brief surges of outrage that fade as quickly as they arrive. All of this creates a feeling of numbness and helplessness. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk pushes against that detachment. Through its unique editing style and its chronicling of a friendship between Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi and Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, the film reminds us of the importance of witnessing each other’s humanity at a time when distance from suffering has become second nature.

The documentary follows Farsi, living in exile in Paris, as she attempts to reach Gaza in early 2024 to document the war firsthand. Blocked from entering Rafah by the Israeli siege, she turns the film into a remote collaboration with Hassouna, a Palestinian photojournalist sheltering with her family in a devastated apartment in Northern Gaza, who was recommended by a Palestinian refugee Farsi met in Cairo. What emerges is not only a chronicle of life inside one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, but also a portrait of a friendship that restores a sense of humanity to a conflict too often reduced to numbers. From the start, the film argues something simple and essential: behind every casualty there is a person with a story, and nobody deserves to live in these conditions.

A collaboration shaped by borders and friendship.

Photo Credit: Kino Lorber

Shot, directed, and partly edited by Farsi herself, the story is told through a series of woven WhatsApp video calls. These calls include the characteristics one would expect when communicating with someone in an active war zone, including signal issues, delays, and interruptions caused by nearby bombing. What makes them distinctive is that Farsi includes the more mundane moments of this communication that are familiar to anyone who uses video calls, such as interruptions by family members and, in many cases, her cat. A traditional documentary might’ve focused solely on Hassouna’s narration of life in Gaza. By keeping them, Farsi emphasizes the humanity of both women and the strength of the friendship that connects them across profound physical constraints. This choice, and the consistent presence of the director, turns the documentary into an act of mutual authorship that resists the emotional distance often felt when watching crises unfold far away.

In addition, the editing rhythm reinforces this emotional closeness. There are pauses, moments of concern, and glimpses of the messages sent as soon as the call fails. These become a key part of the film’s structure, stretching time in a way that parallels the anxiety Farsi likely felt while waiting for updates from someone living in a conflict-stricken area. The documentary employs these silences as emotional punctuation, letting the audience’s sense of care settle in the gaps of the call. Combined with the seemingly unpolished sections of mundane life, they further emphasize the sense of proximity.

Reframing how we see Gaza.

Photo Credit: Kino Lorber

The film also reorients the experience many viewers associate with the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which for most has been limited to watching events helplessly through our phones. Instead of the overwhelming stream of horrific footage that often circulates online, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk uses this familiar digital frame to center Hassouna and her family. While it includes some of her photography documenting humanitarian conditions and occasional questions about the broader conflict, the film focuses almost entirely on their daily lives. It reframes mediums accustomed to horror to insist, quietly and persistently, that behind every casualty there is a lived life. In Hassouna’s case, her love for her family and community never faded, and her willingness to continue documenting the situation persisted even as the psychological toll intensified.

Structurally, the film moves at a slow and meditative pace. Instead of accelerating toward a conclusion, it expands on the details that make Hassouna’s world feel lived-in rather than symbolic. When Farsi informs Hassouna that their work is selected to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, they begin to discuss arrangements for her potential visit to the screening. Though Hassouna expresses a wish to return to Gaza afterward, she and her family are killed mere hours later in an airstrike. By the time this happens, the audience has already come to know Hassouna. The accumulation of the details of her life makes it impossible to treat her suffering as abstract.

The bottom line.

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is insisting that entire worlds are being cut short behind each number of the displaced, the deceased, and the injured. In the end, the documentary acts as a reminder of the power of hope and perseverance that, tragically, also reads as an epitaph. It reminds us that we cannot allow the suffering of others to become too abstract or distant to merit empathy.

The film forces us to confront our own tendencies toward the quiet dehumanization that constant connectivity can produce. It also insists on a fundamental humanitarian truth that audiences need to keep in mind: nobody deserves to live in these conditions, and certainly not to die in them. We owe one another the dignity of bearing witness, and by inviting us to do exactly that, this documentary becomes an essential and urgent work of filmmaking.

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is now playing in select theaters. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Kino Lorber. Read more articles by Pedro Luis Graterol here.

Pedro Luis Graterol

Based in Mexico, Pedro Graterol is the News editor for TV and Film of InBetweenDrafts. He is a Venezuelan political scientist, violist, and a nerd of all things pop culture. His legal signature includes Sonic The Hedgehog’s face.