She should have been there, but instead, Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up a photo. It was of a young woman with a radiant smile, her gentle face framed by a veil. At 8 pm in the Olympia cinema hall in Cannes, on Thursday, May 15, the audience rose as one to honor the memory of Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, also known as "Fatem." On April 16, at the age of 25, she died, along with several of her relatives, in the bombing of the building where she lived, in the Al-Touffah neighborhood, in the northern part of Gaza City.

In such moments, the festival audience feels both concerned and powerless. The president of the Cannes competition jury, Juliette Binoche, paid tribute to "Fatem" during the opening ceremony on May 13. The day before, an open letter published in Vanity Fair and Libération, gathering more than 300 cinema figures (Pedro Almodovar, David Cronenberg, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Ruben Östlund, etc.), condemned the "silence" over Gaza.

Hassona's name has been added to the list of some 200 journalists killed since the start of Israel's ground offensive, in retaliation for Hamas's attacks on October 7, 2023. Since that date, Hassona had been documenting daily life for the enclave's residents, which Israel prohibits foreign journalists from accessing.

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