Francophone Film Festival: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk offers an intimate, first-hand perspective on life under siege in Gaza, captured through video calls between director Sepideh Farsi and 25year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona. Combining raw immediacy with deep humanity, the film portrays daily life during the ongoing war in Gaza through the eyes and unwavering optimism of Fatma, a talented photographer whose generation is trapped in an endless cycle of war, starvation, and resistance. Her conversations with Farsi bring viewers into the heart of the conflict, even as their physical distance underscores the dire reality inside Gaza. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk stands as an essential document, now serving as a heartfelt memorial and final testament: Fatma and her family were tragically killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on April 16, just one day after the film was announced as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.

The RLL department is proud to present the 2026 Francophone Film Festival. Uniting every film is a throughline that explores the theme of global health through a decolonial lens. Through stories of migration, displacement, conflict, motherhood, mental health, and social connections, the festival invites audiences to reflect on the ways health is shaped by culture, place, and community across Francophone countries. Bringing cinema into conversation with questions of global health and social justice, the series invites audiences to rethink what care means in an interconnected world.

Organized by the Romance Languages and Literatures Department with the support of French Connexions Center for Excellence. This festival would not be possible without the support of the 2026-2027 Albertine Cinémathèque Grant. Albertine Cinémathèque is part of the French for All initiative by Villa Albertine – The French Institute for Culture and Education, and Albertine Foundation, and is made possible thanks to the support of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC) and Unifrance.