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The Guardian
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I must document everything': the film about the Palestinian photographer killed by missiles in Gaza
Israel has sought to pursue its campaign of annihilation against Gaza and its people behind closed doors. More than 170 Palestinian journalists have been killed so far, and no outside reporters or cameras are allowed in. The effects of this policy of concealment – which the Guardian managed to pierce this week with a shocking aerial photograph that made the front page – are to ensure that the outside world only catches sight of Gaza's horrors in small fragments, and to stifle empathy for those trapped inside by hiding them from view, obscuring their humanity. But a new documentary film, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, seeks to open a window to the unfathomable suffering inside Gaza. It focuses on the life of a single young Palestinian woman named Fatma Hassouna, known as Fatem to those close to her. She is 24 years old when we meet her, and has such a broad smile and enthusiasm for life that she compels attention from her first appearance, a few minutes into the film. We see Hassouna's life through the screen of a mobile phone belonging to the director, Sepideh Farsi, and most of the film is made up of the conversations between these two women as they develop an increasingly strong personal bond over the course of a year. The director knows all about conflict and oppression. Farsi is Iranian-born and was a teenager at the time of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When she was 16 she was imprisoned by the Islamic Republic regime, and she left the country for good two years later, settling in France. She was on tour with her film The Siren, a feature-length animation about the Iran-Iraq war, when the Gaza conflict erupted in October 2023. As the civilian death toll mounted, she found herself unable just to sit on the sidelines, watching endless debates that did nothing to stop the slaughter. 'The common denominator was that there was never the Palestinian voice there,' Farsi says. 'We had different points of views: the American, the European, the Egyptian, the Israeli, but never the Palestinian. It started really bothering me, and at some point I couldn't live with it any more.' In spring last year she flew to Cairo with the idea that she could somehow find a way across the Gaza border to film the war firsthand. That quickly proved a naive and futile mission, so she began filming Gazan refugees in Egypt. One of them suggested to Farsi that if she wanted to talk to someone inside, he could put her in touch with his friend Fatma in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. We first see Hassouna the way Farsi meets her, on her little phone screen, materialising with green hijab, big glasses and her broad white strip of a smile. They clearly delight in each other's presence from the outset. 'From the first call, I felt that she was someone very special, and that something clicked between the two of us immediately,' Farsi says. 'As soon as we connected, I would be smiling or laughing, and she was the same on her side.' There had been no guarantee the two would get along. Farsi is significantly older, with a daughter Hassouna's age, and she is a cosmopolitan, sophisticated woman who has travelled the world, while Hassouna has been restricted to Gaza all her life. Hassouna is devout while Farsi is profoundly sceptical of any religious talk and challenges her new young friend over what kind of god would allow innocent people to suffer so painfully. However there is far more that draws them together, in ways that are harder to define. 'She had this energy, this shining thing. She was solar,' Farsi says. 'That's the adjective that fits her. Her natural smile. There was this mutual fascination, sorority, comradeship – a mixture of all of these things – and we were happy as soon as we connected.' Farsi makes her phone a portal through which Hassouna recounts her story and the tragedy of Gaza. She talks about her family and introduces her shy brothers to Farsi. She has already made herself a photographer and poet by the time they meet, and Farsi coaches her into being a film-maker and to send out video of the ruination around her. Hassouna is supremely, naturally talented. Her pictures capture the everyday effort of her neighbours trying to survive in the rubble, while her use of language – in her poems and in conversation – is every bit as evocative. The film's title is taken from her passing description of what it is like to venture outside: 'Every second you go out in the street, you put your soul on your hands and walk.' In another conversation, struggling to make sense of what is happening, Hassouna asks: 'We live a very simple life, and they want to take this simple life from us. Why? I'm 24 and I don't have any of the things that I want. Because every time you reach what you want, there's a wall. They put up a wall.' The film should not work. It is determinedly rudimentary, filmed largely on one phone pointed at another. The image of Hassouna sometimes freezes and buffers as the internet connection ebbs and flows. But these glitches draw us in and make us experience the precariousness of their connection. 'That's why I decided to keep this low resolution and not to use a regular camera,' Farsi explains. 'I wanted it to be very low-key technically, to match the connection problems with her, to match the disparity of life here and there.' She had originally attempted a cleanly edited version with all the disconnections cut out. 'It was lacking soul. It didn't breathe. So we put it back in – this brokenness of image and sound.' The sweetness of the relationship at the core of the film is made bittersweet by the constant threat of death around Hassouna. Every so often she reports the death of relatives, or neighbours whose eviscerated homes she points to out of her window. It feels like the encircling darkness is in a direct struggle with Hassouna's smile and her instinctive optimism. Anyone who does not want to know which triumphs in the end should stop reading here. Towards the end of the film, Farsi calls Hassouna to give her the happy news that the film has been selected to be screened at Cannes. They excitedly talk about Farsi obtaining a French visa that might allow Hassouna to get out of Gaza temporarily to attend the festival. While they are talking, the young Palestinian sends the film-maker a photo of her passport. That was 14 April this year. The next day, a Tuesday, Farsi could not get through to Gaza to give Hassouna an update on preparations. 'So I said, 'OK, we'll do it on Wednesday,' the director recalls. 'On Wednesday, I was working on the film on my computer with my phone beside me, and all of a sudden I saw a photo pop up. I opened the notification and saw her photo with a caption saying she had been killed. I didn't believe it. I started calling her frantically, and then called a mutual friend, the one who introduced us, and he confirmed it was true.' In the middle of the night, two missiles fired by an Israeli drone had pierced the roof of her building and burrowed through before detonating, one of them exploding in the family's second floor apartment, the other just below. Fatma Hassouna was killed along with her three brothers and two sisters. Her father died later of his wounds leaving her mother, Lubna, as the sole survivor. The investigative group Forensic Architecture studied the missile strike and declared it a targeted strike aimed at Hassouna for her work as a journalist and witness. Farsi has no doubt. 'She was targeted by the IDF,' she says. 'There were two missiles dropped by a drone on her house. It means they found out where she was living, planned a drone with missiles to go through three storeys of that building and explode on the second floor. It's amazingly well planned in order to eliminate somebody who just does photography. 'I still can't believe it,' Farsi says, speaking from Bogotá, where she is touring with the film, which is now Hassouna's legacy. 'It's three months now, a bit more, and it's still quite unbelievable. For me, she is somewhere out there and I believe I will meet her someday.' In their conversations, Hassouna talked about all the places in the world she dreamed of seeing, while insisting she would always return home to Gaza. Shortly before she died, she told Farsi: 'I have the idea that I must keep going and I must document everything, to be part of this story, to be me!' She imagined passing on her experiences to her children, but instead they have been captured for a cinematic audience, and Hassouna's arresting personality has been preserved at the same time, a portrait of a unique individual among the 60,000 dead. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is in UK and Irish cinemas from 22 August. 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New York Times
28-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Moral Paralysis Facing Iranians Right Now
Last week, when bombs were falling over Iran, I saw a post on social media that posed a harrowing question to Iranians: Would you rather have a stranger kill your abusive father, or have him continue to live and abuse your family? While the question is hypothetical, the post struck me as a painfully precise metaphor for the anguish Iranians are enduring following recent attacks from Israel and the United States. I, like so many other Iranians, am caught in the devastating paradox of this moment: witnessing a hated internal oppressor — a regime in which people can be killed because of what they wear and what they believe — being attacked by a reviled external aggressor, a state engaged in a campaign of devastating and indiscriminate violence against the population of Gaza. Now, as the fragile cease-fire between Iran and Israel holds, Iranians are crushed by the emotional weight of pondering the future of their country. Many, like me, have been gripped by a moral paralysis: a schadenfreude at the death of a brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander curdling into grief for the innocent lives lost, and rage that a hostile foreign power would terrorize millions and kill hundreds in Iran to achieve its aim. I grew up in Iran during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, a brutal conflict that landed in a nation already scarred by a century of foreign intervention, most notably the 1953 C.I.A.-backed coup. During those years, I experienced how the Islamic Republic weaponized morality to justify continuing the war while simultaneously inflicting fear and violence on its own people. This formative experience has guided my 15-year career as a scholar of moral psychology, investigating how our most sacred values can paradoxically lead us to intractable conflict and hate. In this moment of deep uncertainty for my country, my studies of the dark side of human morality have helped me make sense of the fraught moral calculations of a nation. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
South China Morning Post
28-06-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Seaborne scare: how Israel-Iran war put global shipping on alert
Sometime in early 1988, while the nine-year war between Iran and Iraq was still raging, veteran British publisher Abdullah Jonathan Wallace paid a visit to his old friend, Bahrain's information minister Tariq Almoayed. As they drove out of Manama to Tariq's home on another island in Bahrain 's archipelago, Wallace looked seaward and was shocked to see a task force of US Navy ships moored in the Persian Gulf. 'Tariq! Look! Ships!' Wallace excitedly said to the Bahraini minister. Almoayed, who was driving, kept his eyes firmly fixed on the road. 'Ships? I see no ships,' he replied, giving Wallace an unforgettable anecdote to later relate to his Middle East team at the United Press International news agency, which included this reporter. That unprecedented deployment of US Navy ships in the territorial waters of a Gulf monarchy was in preparation for Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval assets.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Will the new Middle East crisis rock the world economy? The markets say no – but I fear they're wrong
Financial markets picked up the clear message when Donald Trump cut short his stay at the G7 summit in the Canadian Rockies this week. Despite calls from fellow western leaders to de-escalate the crisis, the president's early return to the White House was taken as a sign that the US is considering joining Israel in its military action against Iran. Trump says he wants Iran's unconditional surrender. This is where modern summitry came in half a century ago. In 1975, the first meeting of what eventually became the G7 was convened at Rambouillet in France in an attempt to work out a joint response to the oil shock that accompanied the Yom Kippur war between Israel and its neighbours. Back then, the impact of higher crude prices was immediate and brutal. The cost of crude rose fourfold in a matter of months and killed off the post-second world war boom, leading first to higher inflation and then to recession. A second dose of stagflation arrived a few years later when the Iran-Iraq war led to a further doubling of oil prices. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 again led to higher oil prices and weaker activity. History suggests the Middle East can cause all sorts of problems for the global economy. The response to the latest conflict has been much more muted. Oil prices have risen by about $10 a barrel but that will give only a modest upward jolt to inflation and certainly nothing to compare with the shocks of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. At least so far. The region has form and given the risks, the financial markets are taking a remarkably sanguine view of events, even though there are reasons for a moderate degree of optimism. The first oil shock of the mid-1970s was triggered by an embargo orchestrated by Opec, a producers' cartel that is less able to affect crude prices than it was half a century ago. Some countries – the US in particular – are much less dependent on imported oil than they once were. Wind and solar power provide alternatives to fossil fuels. The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has been raging for almost two years, with only a small and short-lived impact on oil prices. All that said, it is less than three years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to a surge in global oil and gas prices, contributing to a cost of living crisis that is only just abating. The latest UK inflation figures released on Wednesday showed the annual increase in prices at 3.4% – well down on the recent 10.9% peak but still above the Bank of England's 2% target. The comparison between the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 and Israel's attacks in the past week is not exact. Russia accounts for 17% of global gas production, while Iran is responsible for just 4% of oil production and China is the biggest customer for its crude exports. That helps explain why the financial markets have been relatively relaxed, with the $10 a barrel boost to oil prices reflecting a sense that the conflict will be contained. The US's potential involvement raises the stakes. One possibility is that the deployment of US military firepower will quickly overcome Iran's resistance and lead to regime change in Tehran. Another is that Iran will retaliate by seeking to close the strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage through which 20% of the world's oil passes daily. That would send the price of oil rocketing from its current $75 a barrel to well over $100 a barrel. The shock would be more severe and longer lasting were Russia and China to get dragged into the conflict. The markets are betting that none of this happens. Oil prices are at their current level because dealers think Iran has had its military capability depleted by Israel's attacks, that Iran would damage its own economy by seeking to close the strait of Hormuz, and that Russia and China will be wary of becoming involved. Things may indeed pan out this way, but the call by the non-US members of the G7 for a de-escalation of the crisis highlights the real risk that it might not. Western economies are still feeling the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, higher energy prices and a cost of living crisis, and could well do without another setback. Petrol prices are already set to rise, the first evidence of higher inflation and a fresh squeeze on disposable incomes. It goes without saying that it would be better for the global economy to avoid yet another Middle East oil shock. But if the financial markets have called it wrong and oil prices do start to spiral upwards, it is important that policymakers don't panic. Higher energy prices are initially inflationary but are then deflationary because they add to business costs and leave consumers with less money to spend. Central banks should resist the temptation to respond by raising interest rates because that would only add to the risks of recession and higher unemployment. Likewise, finance ministers should avoid raising taxes or cutting spending if weaker activity pushes the public finances deeper into the red. In the longer term, countries like the UK need to make themselves self-sufficient in renewable energy and thus reduce their exposure to the Middle East's fossil fuels. The lesson to be drawn from the damage caused by the repeated oil shocks since the 1970s is that we have been here before and it doesn't end well. Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? 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Times
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Times
Inside the Iranian opposition, from a rapper to the Shah's son
T he banner was unfurled over a Tehran bridge by night, with a message scrawled in spray paint. 'Those who experienced the Iran-Iraq war,' it read, 'demand no war again.' The dissidents behind this modest protest a few months ago sought to cover their tracks, wary of the unforgiving punishment that befalls critics of the Islamic regime. But they had decided to take the risk, one organiser in Iran said, because they 'believe Iran is very close to opening a new regional war, which will cost Iran and all Iranians … Enough is enough. If you don't take risks, you can't expect rewards.' That moment feared by dissidents, who are mostly students — just like the ones that helped Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah in 1979 — has now come. Across the region, and above all in Israel and the US, the question is being asked as to how many such dissidents there are and what risk they pose to the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders.
