André N. Anton

André N. Anton was born on October 24th, 1984 in Southfield, Michigan. His parents are Iraqi-Assyrian immigrants of the Syriac Catholic Church of Antioch originating from the town of Bakhdida located in the Nineveh plains region of northern Iraq. His mother's family fled ethno-religious persecution under the Ba'ath Party in the 1970's and immigrated to Detroit where she later met his father who was a recent Irrigation Engineer graduate from the University of Bucharest, Romania. His parents owned and operated a convenience store on the east side of Detroit in the 80's and 90's during one of the city's worst eras of drug-related gang violence. After his parents divorced in 1990, he spent much of his youth helping his mother operate the acquired convenience store while attending school in the suburbs. As a junior in high school at Orchard Lake St. Mary's Preparatory, he was scouted by Bill Miller, a multi-world champion boxing trainer, who originally trained a young Emanuel Steward out of the famed Kronk Gym. He eventually decided not to pursue a professional boxing career and instead chose to attend higher education at Wayne State University due to his mother's influence. At the whim suggestion of a fellow student during orientation, he decided to pursue a degree in Theatre and was immediately cast in lead roles for the Bonstelle Theatre and The Studio Theatre at the Hilberry, and performed as a sophomore on the graduate Hilberry Theatre. Upon graduating, he sought to hone and transform the skills developed through his stage production experiences into filmmaking and attended the Motion Picture Institute of Michigan where he studied under Kathryn McDermott, a former producing executive at Columbia Pictures. André launched his professional filmmaking career by founding Lamassu Productions, a film production company credited with producing his first documentary short film: "Defying Deletion: The Fight Over Iraq's Nineveh Plains" (2011), a documentary about the Assyrian genocide and persecution in Iraq. The film won at several film festivals and screened for U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill shortly after its release as well as for the New South Wales, State Parliament and Federal Parliament of Australia. He serves as the Executive Director for Sacred Heart of Jesus Media Arts, a non-profit pending multimedia organization that produces religious works of the Christian faith.