By Laura Frykberg
A pair of filmmakers have created a documentary showing the impact the 2007 Urewera raids have had on society.
Operation 8: Deep in the Forest began as a documentation of the protests and court proceedings following the raids. However it soon blossomed into a 110 minute story its creators, Abi-King Jones and Errol Wright, felt compelled to tell.
"We're hoping to present another side of the story," Ms Jones says. "But it's up to other people to take away from the film what they will."
The pair interviewed police, ex-security analysts and media lawyers and also lived among the people of Tuhoe, who were allegedly monitored leading up to the raids.
And while filming, Mr Wright felt he too was being scrutinised.
"I thought I was being paranoid and then my cell phone rang and I pulled off to the side of the road," Wright says. "I was the middle of in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and this car pulls up behind me and stops and then when I started up it just started following me again."
The 18 people arrested during the raids will go on trial at the end of May, however the original terrorism charges have since been dropped.
"We've adopted these kind of terror laws from overseas, without them I think this whole situation wouldn't have happened," Mr Wright says.
But without changing the past the filmmakers want to influence the future.
"We can't say for sure what happened and why it happened and be absolutely sure about it, it's an exploration," Ms King says.
Operation 8: Deep in the Forest will have its premiere this Sunday.
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