Defying Deletion: The Fight Over Iraq’s Nineveh Plains” wins “Best Documentary Short Subject” at the Michigan Film Festival

From Lamassu Productions, a film by André Nimrud Anton, which opened this March at the Detroit Independent Film Festival in Detroit, and in Birmingham at the Uptown Film Festival, wins “Best Documentary Short Subject” at the Michigan Film Festival.

“Defying Deletion is an emotionally charged documentary that focuses on the struggle of the Assyrian race in Iraq. The history of the Assyrians is rooted deep into the Northern Nineveh Plains of Iraq, but their religion is Christian, and after the U.S. led invasion in 2003, they have been the target of ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide and region-based killing. This ongoing genocide has led to over 70 of their churches bombed, hundreds of them killed and hundreds of thousands of them forced to flee Iraq and take refuge in unwelcoming countries like Syria, Jordan and Turkey. They are experiencing one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.”

The film is partially narrated and stars Alda Benjamen (Associate Producer, Ph.D. Candidate, Middle-Eastern Studies), Rosie Malek-Yonan (Author, The Crimson Field), Dr. John Eiber (Christian Solidarity International), Waleeta Canon (Assyrian-American National Coalition), Michael Youash (Iraqi Sustainable Democracy Project), Peter Betbasso (Assyrian International News Agency), Joseph Kassab (Chaldean Federation of America), Younadam Kanna (National Assembly of Iraq), and the late Dr. Donny George Youkhanna (Archaeologist, Anthropologist, Author, Curator and Scholar, Iraqi National Museum, and Professor, Stony Brook University).

The film is scheduled for a July 14th screening on Capitol Hill. Senate and Congress members are encouraged to attend. Please be proactive; call their offices in Washington, D.C.

~ Helen Talia, MBA, CPA
www.helentalia.com