WRITER & DIRECTOR
Sepideh Farsi
The Siren, I Will Cross Tomorrow

Dear readers around the world.

Meet Fatima Hassouna, known as ‘Fatem’ throughout this film.

She is a photographer. 24 years of age. Beautiful inside and out, if I may say. Her greatest dream in life is to travel the world.

She has an irresistible smile that puts one in our hearts and is ever the optimist. This is despite the fact that Fatem is a Palestinian woman living in Gaza.

Via a series of video calls made by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi to Fatem starting in April 2024, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk chronicles Fatem’s day to day living conditions, captures her eye-witness testimonies and ultimately provides Fatem with her sole connection outside the war zone she resides in every moment of every day. Farsi, who has her own experience of war and would face imprisonment if ever to return to Iran, enables viewers to immediately form genuine affinity for Fatem alongside her and to absorb the same constant apprehension that each new conversation may very well be their last. Sepideh and Fatem are forming an incredibly meaningful long-distance and virtual friendship, and it is written all over Fatem’s face just how much this means to her. Sepideh concedes this is regrettably as much as she can possibly do to help. Though never enough for her, it is everything to Fatem.

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It takes an awful lot for that precious smile to be wiped off Fatem’s face. That awful lot is the ongoing impacts of genocide.

As Fatem tells Sepideh about family members she has lost to senseless violence, shares some truly horrific detail she has witnessed (how she discovers her grandfather’s remains is just awful), opens up about starvation and suffering depression, and must evacuate from one unsafe location to the next to simply try to stay alive, we can quite literally witness life gradually fading from Fatem’s face. This is utterly heartbreaking. Her dreams before were to travel the world with her camera, but now, her dreams are to do something all of us would take for granted; to eat chicken and enjoy just 1 piece of chocolate. Her only real hope for safety is a ceasefire.

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While I believe there are some questions Sepideh Farsi could have asked she didn’t in place of some she does, it is a very meaningful move of her to incorporate Fatem’s photography and images of Gaza into her film. The eerie and constant sound of aircraft hovering above Fatem during their conversations is simply the reality she resides in and adds to the reason audiences will always feel uneasy throughout the film. It also goes without saying, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk captures just one person’s experience among countless others, each of whom have their own story, of which so many will never get to share. 

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is showing in selected cinemas across Australia from November 20th, 2025.

Moviedoc thanks Hi Gloss Entertainment for providing a screener link to watch and review this film. 

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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