Hernán Zin, war reporter, producer, writer and Italian-Argentine filmmaker, has traveled more than 80 countries documenting and showing the different realities of the world through documentaries and books. Now, he has chosen to settle in Lanzarote to start his professional project in the Canary Islands, DOC LAND CANARIAS, a documentary streaming platform.
Nominated for the Emmy, Grammy and Goya awards, his work has focused on knowing in depth the edges of different armed conflicts, which has led him to difficult situations such as suffering kidnappings or death threats. This has caused Zin a post-traumatic stress disorder with which he has learned to live.
After visiting the island for the first time as a jury member at the Lanzarote Film Festival, Zin fell in love with the island and that is why he has decided to settle part of his new life there.
- What has it meant in your life to see so many realities?
It has been 22 years of making films and books in conflict zones and on the one hand I have felt very useful for those people who are going through the worst moment of their lives, always with the hope of creating bridges and humanizing the figures that appear in the newspapers. We must build bridges of empathy and listening to the other in Somalia, Gaza or Afghanistan helps people understand and there is dialogue instead of violence.
However, personally it has taken a toll on me because I suffer from post-traumatic stress and it has not been easy. One is burdened with the pain of the victims because if you want to tell a story well, you have to feel it and after so many years, in the end that hurts you but I cannot complain, it has been a wonderful life and it still is.
- How are you psychologically at present?
I have been in treatment for years with the psychiatrist Marian Rojas for post-traumatic stress. When I had the biggest crisis, which was when I finished the film Born in Syria after a year of going back and forth from Syria, I had a big crisis and I sank. In addition, I had just separated from the singer Bebe, I was left with a void and a great personal crisis. Right there I was invited to the Lanzarote Film Festival and it was where I began to recover my life, so Lanzarote is very linked to my life. I am still in treatment, post-traumatic stress is something that accompanies you throughout your life, it is not cured, but I live better with it than in 2017 when what I wanted was to commit suicide.
- Now you are going to establish your production company in Lanzarote...
Yes, last year we opened DOC LAND CANARIAS because I love Lanzarote, its people and its landscape, so we are launching a very large streaming platform for documentaries and we are also going to produce a film called There is no surf in Mars. We are very grateful to the island because the reception has been very warm and I have felt very supported by all the locals.
- What will your life be like from now on between Lanzarote and Madrid?
We have the office in Lanzarote and... from Lanzarote, to the world. Obviously passing through Madrid, I am always traveling but I get home and I am happy. You do not know how lucky the people of Lanzarote are to go to the sea in the afternoon for a while after work. That heals the soul, all the problems stay on the earth and that nature makes you feel very connected with everything. I am very grateful for the welcome that both the authorities and the people have given us and I hope that we will generate a lot of work on the island.
- Lanzarote is one of the islands where the most precarious boats arrive through the Canary route...
I have dealt a lot with the issue of migration in works such as Born in Syria and it is a subject that I know in depth and the situation of the people who come is complicated. Migration has many edges and what I ask people is to understand that there are people who are escaping from terrible realities and we should never forget that.
When I made Born in Syria in 2016, it began to be said that ISIS or Al Qaeda was coming, but no, people were walking from Aleppo to Berlin. They were parents, children and grandparents who had lost everything in a war. My job is to humanize all those people so that there is empathy. Instead of complaining about who is fleeing the war, let us look at who causes the war. There is the solution because nobody likes to leave their home. I left my home 30 years ago and being an immigrant is very hard, and even more so when you go in a small boat.
- What will your professional life be like from now on?
Lanzarote is my retreat, that is why we are installing the documentary platform on the island, where young people are going to make the documentaries because it is time to pass the baton to younger people. I will make fiction with the film There is no surf in Mars that we will record in Lanzarote, but I will leave the documentary part in other hands because it is time for other generations to take over.
- Which of the many difficult situations you have experienced has particularly marked you?
After 22 years and 40 wars... I have been kidnapped in the Congo, the hooligans beat me up in Argentina and I have been trapped in Gaza for many months, a little of everything has happened to me. With time I laugh because in the end I chose to be there and it was my mission in life. It is a complicated profession.
In the Congo, the secret services arrested me and deprived me of my freedom for quite some time, it was nothing serious but it was a bit uncomfortable. War brings out the worst and the best of the human condition, on the one hand you see terrible things and on the other you see united families who fight and people who help each other. That helps you a lot to learn from the good and to have the bad present, of course.
- What have you seen in the war in Gaza that society is not aware of?
I have lived in Gaza and I am now recording the second part of Born in Gaza, and it has been very hard to live a genocide live. It has been emotionally devastating. I imagine it has been very hard for many people to see it because I remember other genocides such as the one in Rwanda that we did not experience live.
I think that in Spain people understand very well what is happening in Palestine, unlike other countries. The average Spaniard understands that there is an occupation and that the Palestinians have the right to have their State like everyone else and what they are suffering is a constant theft of their lands. What happened in Gaza has been hard because they have forced us to be live witnesses of a genocide, something that we never thought was going to happen in the 21st century.
- What is your assessment of these years?
It has been a life lived with a mission and I love that. I think it has been worth it. It has not been easy, it has been a lot of work, many trips away from my family and with the traumas that I now carry but it is worth living a life committed with eyes open to the realities of the world and trying to help.
Now it is worth living in Lanzarote near the sea, continuing with my mission together with my whole team, and with that serenity that the sea gives you. When I get into the sea, I feel that in some way I am connected with everything that happens on the planet in some way but I am also detached because I feel very tiny. The relationship with the sea and with the volcanic rock of Lanzarote is very spiritual. I love to make part of my life on the island.