Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction

After several failed attempts, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Terry George finally directs The Promise (2016), the first mainstream fiction feature about the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which 1.5 million people were killed by Ottoman Turks. Recognizing the highly politicized nature of shooting a sweeping First World War - era epic about one of the most contested events in contemporary history, documentary legend Joe Berlinger embeds with the production. Combining emotional behind-the-scenes experiences of its cast with rarely seen archival materials of the atrocities being dramatized, Berlinger restores the human dimension of a dark history. As he digs deeper into the genocide's suppression, he turns up an astonishing campaign by the Turkish government to control the narrative of the massacre, one that reaches directly to Toronto's own film community. This thoroughly original film-within-a-film lays bare the plight of a people, both past and present, still seeking acknowledgement.