Tribute to Fatima Hassouna

We, filmmakers, met Fatima Hassouna when we discovered Sepideh Farsi's film Put your soul on your hand and walk, in the context of our yearly Cannes programme selection. Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: to bear witness, to photograph Gaza, to distribute food supplies despite bombs, grief and hunger. Her story reached us, we rejoiced each time she appeared on screen, knowing she was alive, we feared for her.

On April 16, 2025, one day after we had announced the film's selection at ACID Cannes, we were horrified to learn that an Israeli missile had targeted her home, killing Fatem and several members of her family. One more death added to the list of targeted journalists and photojournalists in Gaza, and at the time of writing, to the daily litany of victims who die under bombs, out of hunger, and because of politics of genocide that must be stopped and for which the Israeli far-right government must be held responsible.

As filmmakers committed to the diffusion of films, it is impossible for us to ignore the weight of this deliberate and programmatic erasing of faces, bodies, and places which Fatem spoke out for. To make images and to broadcast them is to say that these images, and these realities do exist. In the face of the state of Israel's repeated willingness to erase Palestinian reality, we will continue to broadcast Sepideh Farsi's film, thus asserting that Fatem and her reality existed, and still exist today.
We had watched and selected a film where this young woman's life force was nothing short of miraculous. Now that she is no longer with us, it is no longer the same film that we will carry, support, and present in all movie theaters, starting with Cannes. Fatma Hassona embodied a horizon of resistance, peace and freedom, which we refuse to see shattered. 
All of us, filmmakers and audiences, owe it to ourselves to be worthy of her light.

- ACID Cannes 2025 Programme Committee

The eyes of Gaza

Maybe I'm ushering in my death 
now

Before the person standing in front of me loads

His elite sniper rifle 

And it ends 

And I end. 

Silence.

Those are the words of Fatma Hassona (or Fatem to her friends), an excerpt from a long poem called "The man who wore his eyes".

From our first meeting, I grabbed my camera and began filming: our conversations, Fatem and I, what was going on around her. I would ask her to bring me to a window in her house or her shelter, depending on where she was, so that I could look through it. And in this way, Fatem became my eyes in Gaza, and I, her window open on the world,. I filmed, capturing the moments we had during our video calls, everything that Fatem, so fiery and full of life, was sharing with me. I filmed her laughter, her tears, her hopes and her despair. I followed my instinct. Without knowing beforehand where those images would lead us. Such is the beauty of cinema. The beauty of life.

- What's it like, being a Palestinian in Gaza right now?

- I'm proud of it.

- Proud?

- They'll never be able to beat us, no matter what they do.

- Do you really believe this? Why?

- Because… we have nothing to lose.

- Sepideh Farsi (Excerpts taken from  an interview with Libération)