Israel may ban international media from entering Gaza, but the military campaign in the Palestinian territory will feature at the Cannes film festival this year, including in a documentary whose protagonist was killed in an Israeli strike, AFP reports.
Fatima Hassouna, a 25-year-old Gazan photojournalist, is the main character in Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s documentary ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’.
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 conflict.
On April 15, she rang the young Palestinian to tell her the film had been selected for Cannes, and they immediately started trying to organise for her to attend the French festival.
But the following day, an Israeli air strike killed her along with 10 relatives in her family home in Gaza. Only her mother survived. The Cannes Film Festival expressed “its horror and deep sorrow at this tragedy”.
