Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (France/Palestine) – a searing chronicle of a Palestinian journalist in the current war on Gaza, has just been added to the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival 2025 line-up.

Directed by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, this documentary is an unflinching and deeply human film created with Palestinian journalist Fatma Hassona, who courageously documents life in Gaza during the ongoing genocide. Through a creative and intimate collaboration, Farsi and Hassona forged a unique bond: Hassona became the filmmaker’s eyes inside Gaza, while Farsi served as the outside world’s witness to her reality. The year-long online friendship as Hassona shares fragments of life in Gaza via often pixelated video calls with delayed audio, because of unstable internet connection, is at once an act of survival and testimony in a world packed with misinformation; and an act of resistance.

A day after the Festival de Cannes announced the selection, Fatma Hassona was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit her home. Her loss, and the documentary she helped bring to life, now serve as a powerful and heartbreaking reminder of the human and emotional cost of war and the role of journalism in bearing witness.

“A stirring and necessary film… a collaboration forged in crisis and sealed by love and loss,” wrote Variety in a recent review.

The film will be screened in Johannesburg on Wednesday 25 June, 6pm at the Nelson Mandela Foundation (Ticket link), and Cape Town on Sunday 29 June, 6pm at Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront (Ticket link), both screenings followed by a panel discussion.

Ticket sales from Johannesburg’s screening will be donated to the Palestine Film Institute’s Fund. 

This powerful addition to Encounters is supported by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Cinema Solidarity, South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Film Festival.

For more information go to https://encounters.co.za/