Fatima Hassouna, a Gazan photojournalist, age 25, is the main character in Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.
The documentary is likely to draw attention at a festival where the conflict was already present last year. In 2024, Cate Blanchett caused a stir on the red carpet wearing a dress that many saw as a nod to the Palestinian flag.
Cannes 2024 came more than six months after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a devastating Israeli military campaign in Gaza in retaliation.
In the year since, the death toll in the besieged coastal territory has soared, with US President Donald Trump calling for the resettlement of Gazans so the US can turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
Audiences will be closely watching celebrities to see if they take a stand on the conflict.
British movie star Tilda Swinton at the Berlinale festival in February lashed out at “the internationally enabled mass murder” and “development of riviera property,” in an apparent reference to Trump’s comments.
Two features are likely to spark interest in sections that run parallel to the main competition.
Gazan twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser will screen Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a tale of two friends peddling drugs from a falafel shop in 2007, the year Islamist group Hamas started tightening its grip on Gaza.
The film — in the Un Certain Regard section — is the latest from the exiled duo to show at the festival, with several earlier works set in Gaza but shot in Jordan.
Israeli director Nadav Lapid, a critic of his government’s policies, will be showing “Yes” in the Directors’ Fortnight program.
The film follows a jazz musician tasked with setting music to a new national anthem in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.
Hamas’s assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Of the 251 people abducted in Israel that day, 50 are still being held in Gaza, including 30 declared dead by the Israeli army.
The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation has killed at least 52,787 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers to be reliable.
Farsi’s documentary shines light on one of these lives lost. The filmmaker, a refugee from Iran, made “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” from video phone calls with Hassouna over more than 200 days of war.
On April 15, she rang the young Palestinian to tell her the film had been selected for Cannes, and they immediately started to organize her to attendance. But the following day, an Israeli air strike killed her.
The Israeli military, which the media freedom group “Reporters Without Borders” (RSF) has accused of carrying out “massacre” of Palestinian journalists, claimed it had targeted a Hamas member.
The Cannes Film Fest expressed “its horror and deep sorrow at this tragedy.”
