Hisham Zaoui: From refugee to film maker

Hisham Zaoui, who hopes to become a documentary film maker. Photo / supplied

He spent half his life on the road as an Algerian refugee.

Now Hisham Zaoui - son of Ahmed Zaoui - is studying film in the hope of becoming a documentary maker who can bring other refugees' stories to the screen.

"I hope that I can finish my degree in filming and start my own documentary company," he says.

"I would like to cover human rights all around the world. I have strong feeling about refugees, and I feel sympathy with them."

The 26-year-old's father was detained on arrival in New Zealand, branded a security risk and spent give years fighting to prove his refugee status.

Despite his early years as a refugee and his father's initial treatment by New Zealand authorities, Hisham, who is Ahmed Zaoui's eldest son, says he feels safer here than in any other country.

"I feel safe here, but in other countries we didn't have any documents, we could be arrested anytime or sent to Algeria," says Hashim, who moved here in 2007, after his father won a five-year battle to gain refugee status.

"Whenever I saw the police I got scared. Even when I came to New Zealand when I saw the police, to a certain time, I used to get scared, but now it is normal."

He had a peaceful early childhood in Medea, a city 88km south of Algiers, until he was six years old, when the first Algerian multi-party elections in 1991 changed his life.

"The 1991 elections sent my country at least 20 years back," he says.

After the first round results showed the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) would win, the elections were cancelled by a military coup, triggering the Algerian Civil War.

His father, a FIS candidate, was forced to flee the country for fear of his own life.

Hisham and his brothers had to spend four years without a father. Soldiers knocking on their door seeking his father became a part of life.

Then his family left Algeria to reunite with his father in Belgium, a reunification which lasted just a month, because his father was arrested due to the government's security concerns.

"We stayed about two years without my dad, visiting him in jail. We didn't have any documents, any salary or payments, and no country wanted to accept us.

"It was hard times, but it is all souvenirs and fun now when I remember it," he says while trying to smile.

The Belgian government was reluctant to grant his family refugee status, so they left for Switzerland, where they spent a year before being deported to Burkina Faso in West Africa.

The fourth stop on his travel was in Malaysia, where he spent seven years before settling down with his family in New Zealand, the final destination of his 12-year journey.

He began his film studies at Victoria University and will complete them in Auckland.

Mohammad Nazayer is a Whitireia journalism student.