In other words, the film forces us — uncomfortably, uncomfortably — to confront what we would rather deny: that a writer, equal parts truth and fiction, could imagine a future that now feels like our present. Our self-portrait is stitched together not just from Orwell’s sly warnings about power, but also from a nightmare we still insist is just fiction.
“They’re flooding you with information, they’re lying, they’re acting, arresting people on the streets, making you afraid,” Peck adds. “They’re terrorizing, and you know, it works. It’s an incredible attack.”
Put your soul on your hand and walk
Where Orwell: 2+2=5 warns us against apathy towards authoritarianism, Persian’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk forces us to confront the daily reality of living under military control, especially in Gaza.
In early 2024, Iranian-born director Sepideh Farsi arrived in Cairo, notebooks of intentions in hand, only to find the gates of Gaza closed to her. A Palestinian refugee suggested she call Fatma Hassouna, a 24-year-old photographer in Gaza. Through her camera and voice, Farsi discovered the only window she could open.
“I’ve never had such a deep connection with someone I’ve never met… this feeling of being locked in a country you can’t leave,” Farsi tells Wired. “Then it’s just the magic of meeting, the alchemy of a person, and her smile was contagious.”
Put Your Soul on the Line Under a Brutal Military Siege plays out more than a record of a single life; War and the persistence of one life are one and the same. It argues that genocide and all that enables it always seek one thing: erasure. But Hassoun’s smile, working its way entirely through video calls and broken connections over 112 minutes, makes that goal impossible.
The opening shots of Hassouna and Farsi introducing themselves anchor the film in this perspective, which not only feels personal but very social. There are conversations about dreams, traveling to fashion shows, her hopes for war ending, while Farsi occasionally interrupts and tells Hassouna about the wanderings of her own domestic cat.
Over the course of the film, Hasouna comes alive not only as a photographer but also as a witness to life, asserting herself. She sings, writes, and frames the world in small, stubborn flashes of beauty—in agitations, gestures, moments that flicker and hold. The weight of Israel presses in, but in her eyes and lens you sense resilience not as heroism but as relentless survival.
Their conversations flicker in and out—BAD connections, cuts, pixelated resolution. Farsi used the gaps in the film’s life, allowing the audience to feel her frustration and the strangeness of her connection to Gaza. “By keeping these pauses and disconnections, I convey something very strange about how we connect to Gaza, because Gaza is unreachable, and yet it is. It’s like another planet.”
Making the film Farsi was like living in two worlds at once: recording Hassoun from afar, of course, but also being up close as a friend, a witness, and a human being. “We were both in the process of filming and filming,” she reflects. “I had to remain natural, but also somehow in control as a filmmaker. Because of course I had to be able to react in the right way to him.”
