The China Mail - Gaza war casts shadow over Cannes film festival

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".

An Israeli air strike killed Hassouna along with 10 relatives in her family home in Gaza on April 16, a day after she learnt the film had been selected for one of the festival's sidebar sections. Only her mother survived.

The documentary is likely to draw attention at a festival where the conflict was already present last year, including when actor Cate Blanchett caused a stir on the red carpet with a dress that many saw as a nod to the Palestinian flag.

Cannes 2024 came more than six months after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a devastating Israeli military campaign in Gaza in retaliation.

In the year since, the death toll in the besieged coastal territory has soared, with US President Donald Trump calling for the resettlement of Gazans so the United States can turn it into "the Riviera of the Middle East".

After a two-month aid blockade, Israel has announced an expanded offensive that will displace "most" Gaza residents, drawing international condemnation.

- 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza' -

From Tuesday's opening ceremony onwards, audiences will be closely watching celebrities to see if they take a stand on the conflict.

British movie star Tilda Swinton at the Berlinale festival in February lashed out at "internationally enabled mass murder" and "development of riviera property", in an apparent reference to Trump's comments.

Two fiction features are also likely to spark interest in sections parallel to the main competition.

Gazan twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser will screen "Once Upon a Time in Gaza", a tale of two friends peddling drugs from a falafel shop in 2007, the year Islamist group Hamas started tightening its grip on Gaza.

The film -- in the Un Certain Regard section -- is the latest from the exiled duo to show at the festival, with several of their earlier works set in Gaza but filmed in Jordan.

And Israeli director Nadav Lapid, a critic of his government's policies, will be showing "Yes" in the Directors' Fortnight programme.

The film is to follow a jazz musician tasked with setting to music a new national anthem in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

- 'Horror' -

Hamas's assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Of the 251 people abducted in Israel that day, 58 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the Israeli army.

The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation has killed at least 52,787 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers to be reliable.

Farsi's documentary shines light on one of these lives lost.

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 war.

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.

The Israeli military, which media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused of carrying out a "massacre" of Palestinian journalists, claimed it had targeted a Hamas member.

The Cannes Film Festival expressed "its horror and deep sorrow at this tragedy".

Sepideh said she had believed until the very end that Hassouna "would survive, that she would come, that the war would stop".

"But reality caught up with us," she said.

I.Ko--ThChM