Hiona is a New Zealand born filmmaker trained in classical theatre. She directed her debut stage play at Taki Rua Depot Theatre in Wellington with a contemporary adaptation of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. She is credited as a co-writer of four New Zealand stage plays and a producer across several international theatre and contemporary dance production tours.

Hiona returned to academia to study screenwriting and film production at Southseas Film & Television school, and also earned a master's degree in māori and indigenous studies at the university of Canterbury. She is a returning alumni of Berlinale talents and a graduate of the InterDOC masterclass programme of Serbia. She was one of fifty international filmmakers selected for the Apichatpong Weerasethakul film lab held in the Peruvian amazonian jungle in 2022. And she spent six months developing her feature film script with dame Jane Campion and Philippa Campbell in, in association with Netflix and the New Zealand Film Commission.

Hiona's films are representative of fourth cinema and indigenous epistemology and have scooped several international awards including the grand jury prize award from the Oceanian Documentary Festival of Tahiti. Hiona is the writer and director of the māori fantasy trilogy “The Untold Tales Of Tūteremoana” based on the oral stories of her tribal histories.

Hiona also advocates for Takiwātanga (neurodivergent) film practitioners and second chance education. She credits Nancy Brunning, Fred Renata, Tusi Tamasese and Kanakan Balintagos as career mentors.