About HYNAKA
A children's storytelling universe born in France, carried by heroes with Mediterranean and Eastern roots, and made to speak to every child.
HYNAKA creates stories and heroes for children aged 3 to 8. Their world draws on the cultures of the East and the Mediterranean; their adventures know no borders. You enter this universe through listening, with tales to share as a family.
The stories a child listens to never quite fade away. They settle into the way they dream, the way they comfort themselves, the way they look at others. We grow up a little alongside the heroes we loved, and we hold on for a long time to what they taught us without seeming to. That is the idea HYNAKA started from.
For a long time, many children grew up surrounded by wonderful heroes without always meeting, in those stories, the faces, the music or the light that were part of their own world.
We did not want to answer that by drawing one more border. We preferred to open a door.
The door to an imagination still rarely told, and yet made for everyone.
Our heroes have a land, a light, a way of telling stories that is entirely their own. Their tales draw on the imaginations of the Mediterranean and the East, nourished in particular by North African, Arab and Amazigh heritage. But what they go through — courage that trembles a little, fear that must be overcome, friendship thought lost — belongs to no one region. Wherever a child grows up, they can recognise something of themselves in it.
Roots are what make HYNAKA singular. They do not draw the limits of its audience.
Five Guardians open the doors to this universe. Each carries a strength and a part of the world, and it is together, little by little, that they learn to use it. We will not reveal everything here: some encounters are better made with wide-open eyes.
HYNAKA was born in 2024, first as an intuition in the mind of Kahina Ziouche, its founder and creator, before taking shape through a long process of writing, creation and development.
After more than twenty years in the entertainment world, including several years at the heart of Disneyland Paris, Kahina Ziouche wanted to put that experience at the service of a simple conviction: children need heroes they can recognise themselves in, and heroes who can spark wonder far beyond their own cultures.
HYNAKA speaks first through sound: the Guardians' earliest adventures come to life as audio stories to share as a family. That is this universe's first territory, not its horizon. In time, their stories may extend into images, animation and new forms of storytelling.
✦ What we tell you tonight, you will tell one day.