The hidden lives of New Zealand’s ‘takeout kids’

A new documentary explores a common experience of many immigrant children - working at the family's takeway shop

The customers teach me about life. Working teaches me about life. Basically, everything here at the restaurant is life," says Rama Bani Khalid, a charismatic, curly-haired 12-year-old. Rama is a takeout kid: one of many New Zealand children who work in the country's innumerable takeaway and fast food joints. There, she mans the phones and till, hustles for tips and tops up the water bottles.

I'm a waiter and I help out a lot," says Rama, who spends much of her days in her family's Jordanian restaurant, Petra Shawarma, in Auckland. I think I know pretty much everyone on the street."