Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony D’Ambrosio.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in Dallas and served for 6 years as a youth pastor at a church in Fresno. But during that time, I went through a crisis of faith — compounded by a chronic illness that caused severe insomnia and other difficult symptoms. It forced me into a kind of personal wilderness, where a lot of the things I’d built my life around no longer held.
In the midst of that, the only thing I really had the capacity to do was write. I reached out to a local agency owner, Harrison Blum at Social Revolt, and asked if he’d be willing to mentor me. He gave me a chance — I started doing creative writing and copywriting work for startups across the Dallas area, and that opened up an entirely new world of storytelling, marketing, and agency life.
That path eventually led me toward the film industry — slowly at first, and then with growing conviction.
At the same time, I came across the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who volunteered to die in place of another man at Auschwitz. He stepped into a starvation bunker with nine others, simply to offer love and hope in a place defined by despair. His witness met me in my own darkness, and ultimately inspired a short film — which later became the foundation for a feature-length movie: Triumph of the Heart.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Starting a business is always a winding road, filled with challenges. It takes a heroic amount of effort and a lot of luck. I was fortunate to find incredible collaborators early on who were willing to build something from the ground up with me.
One of those people is Cecilia Stevenson, who had previously worked on The Chosen and other Dallas-based productions. She and I really learned the ropes together. Our earliest work was scrappy — the kind of scrappy born out of youth ministry events, where you have no budget and very little time, but still have to pull off something meaningful.
That experience translated surprisingly well to filmmaking. It taught us how to lead, how to adapt, and how to build trust with a team.
Our first major project together — shooting a World War II period drama set in Auschwitz… in Poland… on a shoestring budget — probably wasn’t the most “advisable” first film.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a filmmaker — a writer, director, and producer — and I recently released Triumph of the Heart, a feature film about St. Maximilian Kolbe.
We released the film internationally, and while it’s been a modest success, I think what sets it apart — and what I’m most proud of it.
Our team wanted to make something that broke the mold of what “faith-based film” is often expected to be. Triumph is gritty. It’s dark. It’s emotionally intense. And it’s crafted with the care of someone painting a Renaissance icon — where the artistry is just as important as the message.
We set out to tell a deeply spiritual story, yes — but we also wanted to honor the craft of filmmaking itself. That balance between conviction and creativity is what we strive for.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Being creatively in the trenches with people I love, building something that I believe can shift hearts or spark change… that’s everything.
