All language subtitles for Intent.To.Destroy.Death.Denial.Depiction.2017.WEBRip.x264-ION10

Kadorian, take one.

The gendarmes came,
picked up all the boys

between 5 and 10 years old,

threw us into a pile,

and I happened to be
one of the first ones,

and I was at the bottom
of the pile.

After they had all the boys
in this pile,

they started with
their swords and bayonets,

killing us boys,

and one of the bayonets

just hit me
in my right cheek here,

and the blood was streaming,

not only the blood
from my cheek,

but the blood
from those dead boys,

that hot blood
coming all over me.

And I couldn't scream,
or I couldn't cry,

for fear that they would
finish the job

and kill me again.

What is genocide?
What does that word mean to you?

Well, it's a legal definition.

It's the, you know,
a government or a body

set out deliberately
to eliminate a nation,

a tribe, a religious group,

or, you know,
a collection of people

in some particular orientation,

who they want to eradicate.

Obviously, the Nazis
with the Jews,

the Hutu government with
the Tutsi population in Rwanda,

the Khmer Rouge with
the Cambodian population,

in Trebinje,
it was Bosnian Muslims,

and here in the Ottoman Empire,
it was Armenians.

"Let's eradicate
the Armenian Nation,

so that it no longer
will be a problem

within the Ottoman Empire."

And it's been debated
for 100 years by the Turks

that that's not the case,
that Talaat Pasha

and the Young Turk government,
you know, didn't set out

to eradicate
the Armenian population.

But I think there's
a strong body of evidence,

certainly by what they did,

to show that
that was their intention.

An enormous amount

of what the Turkish government
claims

is demonstrable falsehood.

Why they do that, of course,
is an interesting question.

Many people are baffled by that,
because they think,

"Look, that was 100 years ago.

How are you
responsible for this?"

They have had to go through
such turmoil

to deny this
for a very long time.

Armenians formed a very
significant percentage

of the empire 100 years ago.

And now there are only
like 0.02% Armenians

left in Turkey today.

Had there not been a genocide,

there probably should have been
around 20 million Armenians,

and there are not.

So whatever happened,

obviously they were destroyed
one way or the other.

Where should I sit? Is there
somewhere we're set to sit?

I have a feeling you should
probably sit at the head,

but Terry hasn't said anything.

-Who are you reading, so I know?
-I'm reading Lena.

I'm the Turkish widow.

-Okay.
-Who are you reading?

I'm Mikael.

I'm Ana.

Oh, of course.

They're very sneaky
with their stuff right now.

They have the same PR company
that does tobacco industry stuff

and anti-global warming stuff.

And the whole thing is all about
sowing the seeds

-that there's a debate.
-Right.

They're always pushing
this debate idea.

-Yeah, see? There's --
-Oh, great.

-Wow.
-Yeah. So it's quite a day.

So, I think --
Guys, thanks, for doing this.

Basically, we're doing
this today,

"A," for the reading,
to hear how it is,

you know, make me nervous
as the director and writer,

and secondly, this is
the 100th anniversary,

24th of April, of the start
of the genocide,

when the intellectuals
in Constantinople were arrested.

There's a scene in the script
that references that day.

So we want to start off
this movie with on that day

and hopefully tell
the story to the world.

Eric Bogosian is going to read
the scene description.

Thank you all for coming.

This is the first reading ever

of "The Promise."

Go for it, guys. Okay?

Action.

Exterior.
Siroun, Turkey, 1914. Day.

Over a high mountaintop

to an ancient town
perched on the side of a hill

in this mountainous
Mediterranean region.

Interior, Boghosian Apothecary,

Mikael Boghosian, 30,
bookish, handsome,

an ambitious young man,

helps a customer out the door.

"The Promise" is set
in the Ottoman Empire

on the eve of
the First World War.

It tells the story
of Mikael Boghosian,

and his deep desire
is to become a doctor.

He can't afford to be a doctor,

and so he decides to become
betrothed, as they call it then,

to Miral, the daughter
of the local rich merchant,

in order to use the dowry

so that he can go
to Constantinople

to go to medical school.

He makes a promise to come back
and marry Miral.

It's about one man's encounter
with this great horror,

how he deals with that, and how
he comes out the other end

and finds his own nobility
in challenging this horror.

Constantinople, home to
emperors, popes, and sultans,

heart of the Holy Roman Empire
and now the Ottoman Empire,

the crossroads of the world.

He disembarks the ferry.

From the earliest days

of interest
in the Armenian genocide,

there was interest in making
some sort of feature film

that was about what had
happened to the Armenians

and particularly when
Franz Werfel wrote his book,

"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,"
which came out in the 1930s

and was one of the most popular
books of the 20th century,

translated in dozens
of languages.

"Forty Days of Musa Dagh"

is about an Armenian population

that found itself
on top of a big mountain

in the southern part of Turkey,
beset from all sides,

and they managed
to survive for 40 days,

until finally, they were rescued
by a French warship.

Werfel's novel
was bought by MGM

to be made into
a big Hollywood film.

When the Turkish government
learned of this,

they assaulted
the U.S. State Department.

Their ambassador at the time
was a man named Munir Ertegun,

the father of the famous
Ahmet Ertegun,

the founder of Atlantic Records,
as an interesting side note.

And Ambassador Ertegun
spent a year and a half

cajoling and complaining

and coercing FDR's State
Department about this film,

that was just starting
in production.

He got on the phone
to the State Department

and threatened and got the
State Department to call MGM

and get them to disband
the effort to make that film.

Turkey even said that
not only will they forbid

any MGM film from
airing in Turkey,

they'll forbid
any American movie

from airing in Turkey.

So eventually,
MGM did cower to its interest

and ended the film,

and it never came to light.

There are two ways
to get a movie made now

in the 21st century.

You submit a script
to Hollywood,

and if it thinks it can make
money and attract big stars,

they're going to invest in it,
and they're going to pretty much

take it over
and tell you what to do.

The other side of filmmaking,
which is where I come from,

is independent filmmaking,

where you have a story
that you believe in,

and you go out, and you look
for independent finance.

I mean, I think we had six
or eight different investors

in "Hotel Rwanda."

With this, no one,
certainly no one in Hollywood

is going to invest
in this subject.

But Kirk Kerkorian,
God bless him,

gave us the opportunity
to do that

in a way that no one else
in Hollywood

or around the world
would ever do.

He was born in America,
but basically, his parents

escaped the genocide literally
just a few years before.

He became one of
the great financial characters

of the 20th century.
He owned a lot of property

and hotels and so forth
in Vegas,

was a great competitor
and rival of Howard Hughes.

He bought MGM Studios,
sold it again, bought it back.

So he dabbled in
a lot of industry,

accumulated a lot of wealth,

but at the same time,
never forgot or lost his roots,

that connection to
the Armenian community,

and was waiting
for this opportunity

to have this film made

and to do something
that told the world

about what had taken place
to the Armenian people.

This is for the exterior
of the church, you know?

-Right. Beautiful.
-To put in front of the --

How beautiful.
Look at that khachkar.

-Oh, my God.
-Yes, you like?

That's like the real thing.

Wow.
That is something else.

Will be like marble, you know?

We are building
all the left side, you know?

This is the scaffolding.

We build the whole deck.

Are you ready? Are there things
you're concerned about?

Are things where they should be?

You know,
if you're not concerned

when you're making a movie,

you shouldn't be there.

You should go do something else.

The movies that I did,
that everybody turned down,

turned out to be the ones
that became the Oscar winners.

You know, whether
it's "Rocky" or "Annie Hall"

or "Amadeus"

or "Dances with Wolves"
or "Silence,"

I think most people
would have told you, "Hey,

it's crazy. Don't do it."

What's the crazy
element here on this film?

Well, it's the fact
that they've attempted

to basically pretend
it never happened

and certainly didn't happen
in the way it happened.

I think it's high time,
actually,

that the Turkish
government recognized

that, you know, by saying
what the Germans have done,

which is to say,
"Hey, we're sorry.

You know, it did happen.

You know, how do we make amends
and try to work through that?"

In that respect, this movie
has an enormous importance,

and I don't think it's lost on
anybody who's making the movie.

Terry, how are you feeling about
things? What's happening?

The calm
before the storm or not.

-Yeah.
-Calm before the calm.

Yeah. No, it's good.
We're on our way to Lisbon

to shoot the first scenes
in the movie.

It was obvious we couldn't
make it in Turkey.

That was a given.

So it became, where can
we make this film?

You know, and there were
different ideas of Jordan,

Morocco perhaps,
Spain, Portugal,

and Malta had the geography

and the architecture and all
that would allow us

to re-create
turn-of-the-century Turkey.

So the combination
of all those locations

seemed the least difficult.

-From what perspective?
-Just the threat

of potential interference
or whatever.

You know, it's a politically
charged subject,

and we wanted to fly
under the radar.

We had virtually no publicity
about this at all.

Feel like a queen around here
or the Pope.

The pope.

-Hey.
-Hey, señor, good morning.

-Break a leg.
-Break a leg.

-And break a nose.
-Yes. Yes. Yes.

Whatever it takes.

-Happy first day.
-Yep.

Ah.

Good morning, sir. How are you?

-Good.
-Looks good.

The problem with
writing or talking about Armenia

or Turkey and Armenia

is that most people
don't have much of a sense

of what is Armenia,
or even, what is Turkey,

which, Turkey is an important
player in today's politics,

and I don't think most
people really even know

what's its history.

Very, very importantly,
the Turkish history

is that it was
the Ottoman Empire

before it was
the Republic of Turkey.

And the Ottoman Empire
was around for six centuries,

and it controlled
the whole region

that we now think of
as the Middle East,

as well as the Balkans.

And all these regions
were the Ottoman Empire,

you know, with a sultan,
into modern times.

Actually, the Ottomans,
the name Ottoman,

comes from
Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osman.

It's the dynasty
of the Ottoman, house of Osman.

Most of the people that
are a part

of that Ottoman ruling elite
are Turks,

not the non-Muslims who control
much more of the economy.

And as a consequence,
ethnic Turks

become the dominant group
in Turkey over time.

This gentleman says,
you know, "Are you Greek?

Are you Armenian?"

And he says he's Armenian,

and he says,
"You have to go to the back."

Right. Everything goes
together. Here we go.

-Okay. Are we rolling, guys?
-Rolling.

And, action!

Interior, lecture hall,
University Medical School. Day.

Semicircular rows of desks
rise to the ceiling

in this time-worn classroom.

There is a long
foreground to the events

that erupted as genocide
against the Armenian people

of Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

Genocidal events
don't just happen overnight.

They are brewing,
and they're the result

of complex
dovetailing cofactors.

The Armenians began
to agitate for change,

social and political change
in a system

that legally identified
all non-Muslims as infidels.

It was a very dangerous
thing to do.

It was edgy. They pushed
the political envelope,

and they elicited
the outrage from the sultan,

Abdul Hamid II,

who was the Caliph

and political ruler of Turkey
in the 1890s.

And so for protesting
for change and equality,

the Armenians were met with
wholesale massacre in the 1890s,

during which time
100,000 to 200,000 Armenians

perished alone,

and that's an
extraordinary foreground

to a genocide in 1915.

You can't sit here.

Why?

What are you, Greek or Armenian?

Armenian.

I should have
recognized the smell.

Infidels up the back. Go.

If you devalue a minority group
for decades and decades,

it becomes a lot easier
to turn on them

and to begin to conceptualize
them as less than human.

That makes the killing
much more palatable.

So, out here,
you'll see the Bosphorus.

It doesn't look like that now,
but that's why

that scaffolding is going up,
and that's what we're trying

to figure out
on that uneven ground.

You know, if we could go
and shoot in Turkey,

you know, we'd go do that.
So short of that,

we're trying to figure out the
best way to make it authentic

without breaking that illusion.

And shooting in Turkey
for this movie, is that --

Impossible.

Because of
the subject or the budget?

I think it's
the subject matter primarily

that prevents us
from doing that,

and I don't really know
if Turkey offers

any incentives
for film production.

We didn't really check that out.

This is the party
at the Golden Palace.

Lots of extras again,
50-odd extras,

upper class, fashionable people,

Turks, Europeans, generals.

We've got our Germans,
musicians.

So it's a very,
very busy day for us,

and obviously,
Christian's first day.

There's a party scene
that happens up here,

and during that party, they are
overlooking the Bosphorus Sea

with some German battleships
that come in

and fire their cannons.

These are representing
the two German battleships

that were given to the Turks
during the war,

and they sailed towards
the Bosphorus Strait,

which is true history
that two German battleships

were given to the Turks in 1914

as a gift because the British
commandeered the vessels

that they had paid for,

and the Turks were
really angry about that.

So when the Germans gave them
the battleships,

it tipped the scales
for the Turks

to enter the war
on the German side.

Did you see?

German -- German battleships?

-Yes.
-Gift for the Turkish Navy,

perfectly --
perfectly innocent gift

from Teutonic...friends

to the Turkish Navy.

Turkey has every right
to have a strong navy.

The Empire needs
to protect its borders.

Mm, the Ottoman Empire
wants its borders

to stretch from the Atlantic
to the Indian Ocean,

and what these fellas,
these Germans,

want your sultan
to declare holy war

against the infidel,

the British, French,
and the Russian.

This day marked

not only the actual, formal
entry into the war,

but it also was
when the relationship

between Turkey
and Germany was cemented.

Germany was Turkey's ally,

and so that determined
their fate

for the rest of time, actually.

What happens in Ottoman history

is that from
the 19th century onward,

especially from
the 1850s onward,

there isn't a single war
that the Ottomans actually win.

From 1856 to 1878,

all the wars that they fight,

they lose major chunks
of the Empire.

So the Empire that once
spread into central Europe,

into southern Russia,

and all over
the Arabian peninsula

and, of course, north Africa,

starts to shrink
very dramatically.

During the First World War,

the forces which were
controlling the Ottoman Empire,

called the Young Turks,

followed a new ideology
that was emerging,

which was Turkish nationalism.

Turkish nationalism was
extremely new at the time.

So to understand the genocide,
you have to go and study

the mass psychology
of this group, the Young Turks,

especially their radical
nationalist wing,

which were between two emotions.

One was fear,
fear of losing everything,

and the other one was euphoria
of a new beginning.

They wanted to build a new
empire, a new Turkic empire,

stretching from today's Turkey

up to the Caucasus
in central Asia,

uniting all the Turkic people

within a new
and marvelous empire.

Here we go! Here we go.

Roll cameras.

Rolling.

The films that I've loved

and have taken lessons from,

obviously "Schindler's List,"
"The Killing Fields,"

"Reds," which is
an amazing film, "Missing"...

...all of these are deeply
political films

that tap into emotions.

You know, when you feel pathos,
empathy, rage,

pity, sorrow,
all of those emotions,

that's what I'm most
interested in.

Good.

With this, it's about war fever,

spectacle,

that sense
of Constantinople changing

and going into this kind of
sectarian, war-mongering mode,

and how the Turks turned
on the Armenian population

and the various ethnicities.

This is kind of the start of it.

Yeah?

Bam, bam.

The other one breaks those.

Then you go, bam!

Wait, because he's going hit you
and break this on your back.

It's balsa wood.

Should they smash a window

and then go in and drag him out?

Yeah, the door in.
Kick the door in.

Oh, kick the door.
Yeah, exactly.

-And go in.
-And then drag him out,

and the same in the other shop,
as well.

-Okay?
-Yeah.

Here we go, guys.
And roll cameras.

-Rolling!
-Rolling!

Here you have this context

of this imploding empire
in the Balkans.

Millions of Muslims are fleeing

from slaughtering hordes
of Russian Cossacks.

Nationalists are rising up
in Armenia and Bulgaria

to demand independence.

You know, this cataclysmic
destruction of their world,

of their communities, of their
valleys, of their tribes,

and they're all fleeing
down towards Anatolia,

what is today Turkey.

-Action!
-Action!

And along comes
this new ideology,

this virus called nationalism,

that says everybody must
have their own homeland,

their own flag, their own
anthem, their own motherland.

And the Young Turks bring this

into the core homeland
of Anatolia

in the final days
of the Ottoman Empire.

The Young Turks
are very worried,

especially when
they enter World War I,

that the Allies are going to
start pushing from the Balkans.

The Russians are going
to push from the other side.

The two are going to meet
in Asia Minor,

which they decide is
the heartland of the Turks,

and then they will totally
destroy the Turkish race.

And of course, rather than
having that extinction,

they say, "We will do whatever
is necessary to sustain,

maintain the Turkish state

and the Turkish race
at all costs."

And what is the cost?
Who is the other group

that is actually
claiming the same lands

as their ancestral lands?

The Armenians.

Okay, they've
dragged the guy out.

They're beating
the Armenian shopkeeper.

Take a look around
the corner and go.

The radical wing
of the Young Turks,

they identified the Armenians
as the perfect other.

The Armenians were not Turkic.

The Armenians were Christian,

and the Armenians constituted

most of the urban
middle classes,

the urban bourgeoisie.
And the Young Turks,

they felt that they
couldn't compete with them.

In fact, they wanted to take
over their social function

by taking over their property
and getting rid of them.

Okay. Stop a moment.

Can you quantify
the elimination

of a culture like that?

No.

It's very hard to do,

and it's very complicated
by the fact

that the Armenians
were interwoven

into this very
complicated fabric

that was the Ottoman Empire.

The Armenians are people

who've been there
for thousands of years.

They were there for a couple
of thousand years

before even the Turkic people
showed up from central Asia

about 1,000 years ago.

By the fourth century
of the Common Era,

Armenians become
the first nation

to make Christianity
their state religion,

a little bit ahead of Rome.

This is a civilization
that has propelled or refined

intellectual
and cultural heritage.

The Armenian alphabet itself,
to just give you one example,

is one of the most beautiful
alphabets in the world,

and the reason why is
it was actually designed

to be beautiful.
It was designed by artisans,

and it was created to translate
the Bible into Armenian.

So Armenians have a very deep,
deep, rich, and long history.

It's hard to know what the
future would have looked like

had this terrible thing
not happened.

With the outbreak of war,

the Turkish ruling elite
perceives

that it has a context
and a justification

for getting rid
of the Armenian population,

the whole Armenian
population of Turkey.

It has a context now.

Turkey's at war.

During times of war,
as we know,

genocides are more prevalent
because societies are mobilized.

They're armed.

There's a lot of focus
on sedition and alien behavior.

Security issues
trump everything.

The Young Turk
ruling triumvirate,

Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha,
and Djemal Pasha,

those three men
came to concoct a plan

to eliminate the Armenians

with the war as a kind of screen

and rationale to do so.

The Armenians are traitors.

Their men have flocked to join
the Russians, to fight our army.

And thousands of them
have joined our army.

And there's another line,
Sharif, I want you to add,

that because a lot of Armenians
have volunteered,

and the patriarch
has advised Armenians

to support the war
at that point.

So there's this thing of, like,

"I have a lot of Armenians
in my army here.

You know, there may be
some traitors,

but we have a lot
of loyal subjects."

-Yeah.
-All right.

If we get everybody ready,
we can set up and rerun it.

It will be about 35,
40 minutes...

-All right. Cool. Good.
-...to be ready.

And we may tweak a few lines
here and there.

-Yeah. Yeah.
-All right.

So, these walls
come out, boys, please.

These walls come out.

I am actually the architect,

the engineer
of the extermination

of the Armenian people,

and I say it in the lines,
"It is absolutely necessary

to eliminate the Armenian
nation in its entirety,

so that the very concept
of Armenia is extinguished."

This character was actually
an advisor to the sultan

and to the government.

He's a real character
in the history.

Their goal was,

"We should diminish
the number of Armenians

into a level that they should
never raise their voice

for their democratic
and social rights."

What is this percentage?

They develop a percentage.

5% to 10%.

Those Armenians who
should remain in Anatolia,

they should not exceed
5% of Muslim population,

and those Armenians who should
be deported to Syria and Iraq,

they should not exceed 10%.

So this is practically
to exterminate the cultural,

social, political
existence of these people.

This is not the Middle Ages.

We cannot just eliminate
an entire nation.

The world will not stand for it.

The Armenians are traitors.

Their men have flocked to join
the Russians to fight our army.

And thousands of them
have joined our army.

They are an
untrustworthy nation.

They say one thing,
and they do another.

We will relocate them
to the southern deserts.

General, let us go and inform
the sultan of our victory.

Gentlemen.

These evacuations
are already under way.

We expect your full support.

-Okay, good. One more.
-Once again.

Those organizers of
Armenian genocide in Istanbul,

they were social Darwinists.

They were social engineers,

and they implemented
a perfect demographic policy.

This is one of the reasons
of Turkish denial, of course,

because Turkish state
was a product

of this demographic engineering.

If you really touch this topic,
you will touch

the founding myths
of Turkish Republic.

This is something
that goes under the skin.

Okay, let's do one more.

Okay, once again.
Stand by now.

The Armenian
genocide represents

the first case of genocide

committed in a modern modality,

which is to distinguish it
from pre-modern genocide,

which is as old
as history, of course.

But in this case,
we have an example

of a government
using its bureaucracy,

its military, its advanced
communication and technology,

and an extreme nationalist
ideology, Pan-Turkism,

and that defines
a landmark moment

in the practice
of genocidal mass killing.

A million Armenians were killed

in seven or eight months
in 1915,

a million Armenians
just in that period.

That was unprecedented
in modern history.

We had no example
of a million people

being wiped out
by a national state apparatus

in such a concentrated
period of time.

In 1916, there would be
another couple hundred thousand

Armenians mass-killed.

And so we're already saying,
perhaps, generally speaking,

about 1.2 million Armenians
have been annihilated

by this new, modern practice

of mass killing
by the end of 1916.

The genocide starts off
and did start off,

was kicked off,
on April 24, 1915,

by the arrest
of 240 intellectuals

and the kind of
fundamental characters

within the Armenian community
in Constantinople.

Why do this? Because,
this way, the Turkish state

cut the head off
of Armenian culture.

It silenced it.
It pulled its tongue out.

-Next.
-The Ottoman Armenian men

are conscripted
into the military...

You have been assigned
to the 3rd military division.

...and put into labor battalions

where they were to do
scut work on railroads

and latrines and roads.

And they were all
eventually killed

by their fellow Ottoman
Muslim soldiers.

So, by the spring of 1915,
the Turkish government

has already eliminated
the able-bodied men

from age 15 to age 50.

Most of them
have been wiped out.

Then the Ottoman government
used its parliament

to pass two legislative acts,

a temporary law of deportation

giving every provincial
governor and mayor

the right to arrest
Armenians wholesale

from their homes
on the false pretext

that they were somehow
seditious, you know?

Whether they were 5-year-old
kids playing in the backyard

or 80-year-old grandma
cooking in the kitchen,

they were all arrested
and then massacred,

most of them,
on deportation marches,

which were taking them
out of their cities.

And then there was a temporary
law of confiscation

and expropriation, which gave
legitimacy to the Turkish state

to take over
all Armenian wealth.

How many folks are we
talking about in there?

The actual carriages,
they had about 100 people

that were stuffed into one,

and then they weren't let out
for maybe weeks at a time.

They hadn't, you know --

They were not given food
and water, so people died.

It was a first example
of people being moved

in this way by trains.

These were mainly women,
children, and old people.

The Germans were building
a railway

to go from Berlin to Baghdad,

and they were building it
during the First World War.

So they, of course,
wanted arms to be moved

from point A to point B to help
them in their war effort,

but the Turks wanted to use
the railway for another purpose.

The famous Anatolian railway
between Berlin and Baghdad

was used to deport Armenian men,
women, and children

from the western areas

down to the center
and southeast of Turkey,

where they often
found themselves dumped

into the big, vast
northeastern Syrian desert

called Deir ez-Zor,

where between 400,000
and 450,000 people perished.

It's been likened
to the Auschwitz

of the Armenian genocide.

What role do the
German officers play in this?

The Germans were
interested in British territory,

the British Empire.
They wanted Baghdad

because it was a way
to compete with Britain.

And for them,
it was a colonial war.

Turkey was their mercenary.

It was territory to be used
and exploited.

And it was a good deal.

What they didn't know was that
the Turks had another agenda...

...which was this sideshow
of the Armenian massacres

to get rid of this minority that
was really very inconvenient,

that they'd been wanting
to get rid of for a long time,

and now was their chance
under the cover of war.

Exterior,
train carriage, night.

Mikael leans out
looking along the train.

A flash of lightning illuminates
a host of arms outstretched,

cupped, trying to catch
the precious rain.

-Open the doors.
-Save us!

-Help us!
-Help us!

Mikael finds a crack
in the wooden wall,

peers inside the cattle car
jammed with Armenians,

women, children, old men.

Torrential rain is pouring down.

-Please!

One of the really interesting
historical angles

that's very understudied in the
case of the Armenian genocide

is the German involvement,

which was there
in a very, very big way.

And many of the
deportation orders

are actually signed
by German generals

or German military officers

who then went on to illustrious
careers in the Third Reich.

And it's very clear
that, in many, many ways,

the German ideas
about population control

stemmed partly
from their experience

in the Ottoman Empire.

I mean, there is the very famous
quote of Hitler's saying,

"Who now remembers the
extermination of the Armenians?"

This is just before
the invasion of Poland.

One can commit huge crimes
against humanity

and get away with it.

That's the lesson he's drawing
from the Armenian case.

And it's not a lesson that you
want people to be able to draw.

That is a recipe for disaster.

So, maybe if she's laying
across like this,

and you go to turn her
around to see her,

-then you see what's --
-Well, if I --

-If she's facing that way...
-Yeah.

...and you're facing that way --

-Yeah.
-She's on her belly.

Yeah, your body's,
like, that way.

And then, I notice that
it's her, and I bring her here.

And then, I would look down
and see that.

-Yeah.
-Yeah.

Now, what you can see is that
there's blood up here, right?

Well, we see a bit
of blood on her face, yeah.

But I think this should
be soaked in blood.

Why?

Well, there's a --

Because it's always
better for the audience

to presume than what --

-No, but if there's blood --
-We'll put a little bit,

you know? Yeah.
We'll put a little bit.

For many people in the world,

this will be their only
encounter or reference

for the Armenian genocide,
just in the same way

that "Schindler's List" was
for the Holocaust,

and "The Killing Fields"
for Cambodia

and "Hotel Rwanda" for Rwanda.

So I want to show the full range
of the atrocity that took place.

But at the same time, I want to
keep it within the context of,

"What's the impact
on the participants,

the characters themselves?"

and let the audience feel
the horror of it through them.

That's the balance,
the tightrope that I walk.

The reality
was much more brutal.

-The bodies were stripped.
-Far more brutal.

Far -- There was rapes,

bodies that dismembered,

all that stuff, you know?

In reading
the testimonies

of those
who have seen this happen,

essentially, people
were being escorted

by irregulars
and Turkish police,

both the gendarmes,
the soldiers.

And they really didn't know
what was going to happen to them

until the last minute.

They were often taken
into a valley or a gorge,

a place where it was
difficult to escape.

Turks riding on their horses,
encircling people

who had no clue when they were
going to be killed.

I mean, maybe they had
an inkling,

because word was
beginning to spread

that they were going
to be massacred.

But, you know, there's always
a little bit of hope

that maybe it won't
happen to you.

Okay.

How does kids on
the set kind of impact things?

These are particularly
horrific scenes of massacre,

and so we want to be delicate

in the way we instruct kids

and handle them.

I'll make sure that,
you know, nothing hurts.

I'll make sure your head is safe
and everything like that.

So you can trust me, and you can
really relax, okay?

That's it.

And then, let your arms
just relax.

That's it.
Let the other one relax.

That's it.

Perfect. Perfect.

And I promise
I will not drop you

or let any part
of you get hurt, okay?

And then I'll put you down
really gently.

Like that.

And that's it. That's it.
Okay, man?

Look at that. He's good.
Man, you can really --

You do that well.

He does that really well.

Yeah, that's really good.

Look at that. Look at that.
Nice one.

Good job, man. Love that.

All right. Here we go.

Here we go, please.

And roll camera!

-Roll camera!
-Rolling!

And...action!

It was terrible,

what they did to those
Armenians, you know?

It's awful, you know?

Nobody could save them.

People are getting
burnt in ditches.

They looked like skeletons

with mothers and children
dying together.

It's really bad, sickening,
how these people were treated.

Papa?

You have taken
the audience into a place

they'll most likely never
encounter or even fathom at all.

And you have to do it in a way
that, ultimately,

strangely enough,
is entertainment.

Nobody is going to pay
to go into the cinema

and be in the middle
of a slaughter.

How do you find
the balance, then?

For me, what I have to do

is find the distillation
of this enormous crime.

What are those moments

that are going to take
the audience right in there?

When my mother died,

we dragged the body
to the dried well.

The other boys
just pushed the body,

my mother's body, and ran away.

I stayed there for a few seconds
for her to sink down.

Just kept on haunting,
that scene,

as to what kind of a son

could one be

to push her mother down

and run away?

It's an experience I wouldn't
wish even my worst enemies.

Oh, God!

Oh, no!

Oh, God! Ohh.

It's a very emotional scene.

It is a very emotional scene.

And you keep wondering, "Why?

Why is this happening
over and over again?

Why don't we put a stop to it?

Can we stop it?
We should be able to stop it."

This took place 100 years ago.

Same thing is happening
right now.

Why? You wonder why.

It's an extremely
difficult scene.

The story of my granddaughter,
Yeva, in the film

is the story of my mother,

who was 4 years old in 1915

when she was in
the arms of her mother,

and they were all shot
in a group.

And they thought my mother
was dead, as well.

And she fell with her mother
amongst all the corpses.

And when they thought they had
killed everybody and moved away,

my mother got up and...

saw her mother dead,

everybody around her dead,

and she walked off,

ended up in a village.

And she was looked after
by a Kurdish family.

If you're Armenian, you grow up

hearing all the stories
about the genocide,

about your ancestors,

about the things that they've
been through, and --

And all of my ancestors

have been a part
of this somehow.

So I guess -- I guess...

I'm the result of orphans who
ran away at the time, you know?

Today, we are in Fresno,

which is a small village
outside of Madrid,

where we are shooting what
we call the hanging village,

which is essentially
a destroyed Armenian village

after the Turks
have come through.

Chris Myers, our reporter,
Christian Bale's character,

stumbles onto that
and takes some pictures,

hopefully sends them home to
the A.P. to run in the papers.

Mani?

They don't say anything about
Allah or God or anything.

It's about, "These acts has
sanctioned by the government."

and --

So we did it without
any religion --

But what's your reference
for it?

Oh, I have it in my computer.

It's from an actual sign?

Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-It's a real one.
-All right.

We have a number of photographs

that have been circulating
around through pre-production

that have given us the basis
for all of these locations,

and our hope
is to replicate them

in a way
that you sort of feel them

without feeling
as much as of the horror

as you really get
from these photographs.

You know, it's trying
to get it out to an audience

but not make it repulsive,

because the events
really were, so...

There's a scene in the movie
where Christian Bale goes

and attempts to take pictures

of what's happening
to the Armenians.

So he becomes aware
there's this stuff going on,

and he gets a guy
to drive him out there,

and he tries to take pictures.

That's what's happening
in the movie.

In the real world, it was
forbidden to take pictures

of anything that had to do

with what was happening
to the Armenians.

When you were in a train, if you
were Germans, for instance,

moving from one part
of the country to the other,

the windows were blacked out

so you couldn't take pictures
of what was happening outside.

We must leave, sir.

The Turkish
government was in contact

with every photo lab
in the country.

If anybody brought in any film
to be developed,

and it had anything
to do with this,

they were to not develop it

and immediately
let the government know.

We must leave!
Come. We can't be here.

That's why there are almost
no photos of what had happened.

There were people
trying to take photos.

There were German soldiers
taking photos,

particularly Armin Wegner,

whose photos have been
published since that time.

I came in Turkey

as a member
of the German Red Cross.

I was a witness
of the terrible persecution

of the poor Armenian people

and saw the terrible sacrifice.

A witness
is a very difficult task.

I could nevermore forget
what I have seen.

The Turkish
government had a slight problem,

which was that the United States
did not declare war on Turkey.

As a result, there were
American missionaries

still all over Turkey
during this time,

and they were telling people
what was happening,

what they were witnessing

and later wrote out
first-person memoirs

about what they had seen.

Later, it would be said that,
"Well, they were biased,"

or, "They were
Christian missionaries."

But the thing is, their stories
are too consistent

and too disturbingly
consistent to dismiss.

We must leave! Come.

Minister, you are
using this so-called relocation

as a cover
for the systematic extermination

of the Armenian people.

Ambassador, you're Jewish.

Why are you so concerned about
these Armenian Christians?

I am a Jew,
and I am an American.

Many Americans have
fled persecution,

and they are appalled
by what is taking place here.

Very key at this moment
was Ambassador Morgenthau,

who was the American Ambassador
stationed in Constantinople

and who stayed there
because the United States

had not declared war on Turkey.

He began to write about
what was happening,

and this began to build
and build and build.

And people developed
a very strong sense

that there was
a coordinated effort

to destroy the Armenian people

within what we call
Turkey today.

The coverage of
the Armenian massacres

during the World War I period
was enormous.

"The New York Times" alone
ran 145 articles

on the genocide just in 1915.

At the time,
and immediately afterwards,

America was, in many ways,

Armenia's greatest champion.

It sent $116 million
in humanitarian aid,

which is about a billion
and a half today.

My grandparents, for
example, at the dinner table,

always said, "Remember
the starving Armenians."

Thousands of American
volunteers went to places

like Aleppo, Beirut,
throughout the Middle East,

and they administered
orphanages and other aid.

And it was a real
grassroots effort.

You had people like Rockefellers
and the Morgans send money.

But you also had
Sunday school children do it.

Proceeds from the Harvard/Yale
football game in 1916

went to Armenian charities.

In 1920, Babe Ruth
became the first player

to hit 50 home runs,

and the bat he used
to hit that 50th home run

was auctioned off
for Armenian charities.

The Near East Relief
effort was the biggest single

international humanitarian
relief effort

that had ever,
to that point, been mounted.

And it was the first time
the United States had done

such a thing in its history.

You really have
America doing this heroic deed

some hundred years ago.

And because of America's policy
of not recognizing the genocide,

it has hidden that great moment
in American history

where it was so selfless

and really at its best
from its own people.

And do they
understand what the scene is

that they're
actually portraying?

-And she runs away.
-Yes.

Right. Here we go.

And roll cameras!

Rolling.

And off they go, guys!

Walking! Off they go!

As far as you could see
on the horizon,

you could see
these people, Armenians,

with dark, sad eyes,

almost skeletons,
walking to their death.

The Turkish soldiers put
the sword on her stomach,

and the baby came out of her,

and the mother died there, too,
right there.

1915, the deportations started.

Armenians started
ending up in Aleppo, Damascus,

and Syria Deir ez-Zor,

Ras al-Ayn, Raqqa,
Mosul, today's Iraq.

Camps were established,
neighborhoods created.

They were settled
in certain cities and towns.

And the Ottoman authorities

monitored the Armenian numbers
in a weekly basis.

When they noticed
that the number of Armenians

are exceeding the 10%
of the indigenous,

they thought they could have
killed them on the ways.

And 1916, summer,
Ottoman government organized

a second wave of
physical extermination,

and they killed more than
200,000 people in summer 1916.

After World War I,
the victors of the war

had a great deal of sympathy
for the Armenians

and really tried
to do them right.

At that time,
we have to remember

that Woodrow Wilson
arriving in Europe

was this huge shift
in American foreign policy.

Suddenly, America became
a world player,

and this was one
of the first acts

that he did to show how powerful

and how great America could be.

Mostly what they wanted,
from a political standpoint,

was to create
an Armenian nation

that would be free
from further persecution,

to provide for some kind
of payment or reparations

to Armenian victims,

and to punish the perpetrators
of the genocide.

All of that was memorialized
in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920

between the war's victors
and the Ottoman Empire.

There was a whole
signing ceremony.

The Armenians were there.

The war's victors were there.

The Ottoman delegates
were there.

But that treaty
was never enforced

in part because, at the time,
the sultan,

who was sort of the figurehead
running the empire,

actually didn't have de facto
rule over his own country.

In the fall of 1922,
Sultan Muhammad VI,

whose family has reigned
for seven centuries,

fears for his life
and goes into exile

as crowds cheer his going.

Mustafa Kemal's victorious army
enters Istanbul.

You have Ataturk rising up

in the central
and eastern part of the empire,

and a lot of his popularity
was due to the fact

that he was going to fight the
terms of the Treaty of Sèvres,

especially
the territorial terms,

which would have
carved up Turkey

into a much smaller country.

First President
of the First Turkish Republic,

Mustafa Kemal, during the 1920s,

keeps his limitless
wartime powers

and his command of the army,

makes the hard, dry town
of Ankara his capital.

His fantastic dream is not
of empire or conquest

but of creating
a democratic Turkey,

a new kind of Turk
in his lifetime.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
became one of the major generals

of the Ottoman Empire
along with Enver and Djemal,

and he couldn't
get along with them

because he obviously had
his own vision and ideas.

So he was, like, exiled to
the east, away from action,

and that's why
he was able to survive

and not be stained
by the genocide, so to speak.

He wasn't directly
involved in it.

And that, of course,
helped him later on

when he started
the independence struggle,

because he was chosen to lead
the independence movement

specifically
because he wasn't involved

in the Armenian genocide.

Ataturk kind of dares
the Allies of the war and says,

"Look, you have this treaty,

but if you're
going to enforce it,

you're going to have
to start a new war."

Woodrow Wilson had proposed an
American mandate over Armenia,

where United States would
send troops and advisors

and kind of watch over
this small fledgling country.

And the Senate rejected that.

While the rest of
the European Powers

were carving out
all these mandates

from the remains of the Ottoman
Empire for economic reasons,

Woodrow Wilson came back with
this incredibly altruistic idea

that America would support
Armenia on moral grounds.

Congress just went,

"You came back from
the Paris peace conference,

and this is all you brought,
a mandate for Armenia?

Like, you know,
what about the oil?

What about all the resources

that the rest of
the world is sharing?"

By 1923, they enter
into a new treaty with Turkey,

and it's called
the Treaty of Lausanne,

which is signed in Switzerland.

And that treaty has
none of the same terms

when it comes to the Armenians
that the Treaty of Sèvres did.

There are no talks
of reparations.

There's certainly no talk
of punishing the perpetrators

or transferring Turkish
territory to Armenians.

And that treaty is also
the birth of modern-day Turkey.

It no longer is
the Ottoman Empire

and instead becomes
the Turkish Republic.

The world is anxious to restore

good diplomatic relations
with Turkey.

From the United States comes
Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew.

For this revolution
and high accomplishment,

one man is
primarily responsible.

The name of Gazi Mustafa Kemal
will forever be associated

with the development, founding
of the new modern Turkish state

and will forever be inscribed

indelibly upon
the rolls of history.

The Turkish nation
is democratic by nature.

I have no doubt
that the American nation,

which has gone so far
in this ideal,

is Turkey's friend in her aims.

This will not be all.
Perhaps it can lead

to a world of love,
with all old prejudices erased,

with all nations coexisting
in peace and prosperity.

Ataturk was a very smart guy,

and he learned how to be
strategically very valuable,

especially as the Soviet Union
became more and more powerful,

very valuable to the West.

We have to remember that, at
the end of the First World War,

the holdings of
the former Ottoman Empire

were extraordinary.

I mean, the new world hadn't
seen anything like this

since the discovery of gold
in South America.

The oil reserves
were just so massive.

Ataturk was able to help the
West have access to those fields

in return for certain issues
not being dealt with,

and one of those
was the question

of the Armenian genocide,

that the Armenian genocide
basically went away.

It's around this time that we
start to see the history books

getting turned inside out,
first of all,

by changing the whole language

so nobody could read
any old documents.

They went from a sort
of Arabic script to a modern,

more Western script,
changing place names.

I went through the
Turkish educational system.

According to all the Turkish
history books,

everybody, like,
victimized the Turks,

and the Turks didn't
do violence to anybody.

I mean, as a consequence,

anyone who goes through
the Turkish educational system

has no idea about
what happened in the past

and what the Turkish state
and its predecessor,

the Ottoman Empire,

was capable of and had done.

Now, Ataturk himself
was not a participant

in the Armenian genocide,

but many of the people who
flocked to the Turkish flag

were involved in it,
and there's another aspect here,

and that is that a lot of
the property of the Armenians

who were expelled or murdered

was given to refugees
from the Balkan Wars

who were Muslims
and came into Anatolia.

So there was
a big property transfer,

and that become the basis

of the Turkish middle
and upper classes.

If you discuss the history

from the perspective
of genocide,

you could see,
without deportation,

without killing of Armenians,

you couldn't be able
to establish this republic.

It goes contrary to the founding
legends of the republic.

The Turkish republic today
owes its own existence

to the extermination
of Armenian people.

This makes the issue difficult.

Tell me where we are.
This is a new location.

A new location.
We are in La Cabrera,

which is about 45 minutes
outside Madrid in the mountains.

We're shooting today the exit
of the village of Basek,

which is one of our
imaginary villages

that stands in
for four or five villages

around the mountain
of Musa Dagh.

This is the scene when
our small group of orphans

and Mikael and Ana

are traveling to Basek to try
and get in a boat to escape.

What they find is a large group
of 1,000 or so refugees

who are heading up Musa Dagh,

because Basek has been abandoned
essentially by the Armenians.

You know, it's
the third act of the film.

We're re-creating
another true event,

a very heroic and historic event
for the Armenian people

and a story that's tried to be
told several times on film

and been blocked, sometimes
by the Turkish government

and by intimidation.

All right. Let's wait.

Let's wait until
they start moving.

-Don't move the drone yet.
-Don't move. Don't move.

Don't move. Just wait
for this guy to start moving,

and then we can move.

Musa Dagh was one of the few
places in the Ottoman Empire

that Armenians were
not slaughtered en masse

because they figured out
that the genocide was happening,

whereas most Armenians
were not aware

of what was happening to them.
They were told things like,

"Oh, you're being deported
for your own safety,

and you'll be back once the war
ends," and things like that.

So people kind of --
They didn't resist.

Musa Dagh was one of
the few places

where there was some resistance.

The fact that they went
on top of this small mountain

really allowed them
to be able to pull it off.

And eventually, they were saved
by a French Naval ship.

And this become the basis
of Franz Werfel's novel,

"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh."

Now, Terry, how would you like
possibly just starting out here

with a big, wide tableau
like that to start it off?

The light's fading. We all know
it's going to be dark

in a minute, and it's the mad
10 minutes before we wrap, yes.

And, of course, this is
our biggest shot of the day.

Everything we have on set is in
this shot today, so 200 extras,

probably about 30-odd horses,
goats, chickens,

donkeys, cows,

our principals.

Everything we have
on this location

is in this shot now
coming up, 10 minutes.

Why did you wait
till the end of the day?

Because that's what we do.

-That's what we do.
-Yeah.

All right. Come on, guys.
Let's go.

In shutting down the production

of "The Forty Days
of Musa Dagh,"

MGM, that was the first example

where Turkey not only
re-created its own history

where it removed the genocide

and, in fact, removed the
Armenians from its own history,

but now it was trying
to extend this narrative,

this false narrative
to other parts of the world.

Now, because this issue kind of
laid dormant until the mid-'60s,

you don't see Turkey
doing much of this again

until the 1960s, '70s,
'80s, and beyond.

And by then, it becomes a very
sophisticated apparatus.

And, Luis, we'll go with
the cart as it rides out here.

We'll stay at this height.

That's good until I tell you
to come up here.

Beautiful. Beautiful.

So, tell me about that initial
silence by Armenians.

You know, why?

After World War I
and after Armenia

is swallowed up
by the Soviet Union,

Armenians are dispersed across
the world in this diaspora,

and they can't really
incubate political power

'cause they're so few,
and they're rebuilding.

So when it came to the genocide,

Armenians had this
public silence

that lasted for about 50 years.

Genocide is a new word,

combining the Greek word
"genos," meaning race or group,

with the root of the Latin
"cidere," meaning to kill.

Dr. Raphael Lemkin is the man
who created the word genocide

and really has fought this thing
from long, long ago.

Dr. Lemkin, could you give us
a little background

on how you came to be interested

in this genocide fight
originally?

Gladly, Mr. Howe.

I become interested in genocide

because it happened
so many times.

It happened to the Armenians,
and after the Armenians

got a very rough deal
at the Versailles Conference,

because there are criminals

who are guilty of genocide
who are not punished.

So you see, as a lawyer,

I thought that crime should not
be punished by the victims

but should be punished by
a court, by international law.

The great Polish-Jewish
legal scholar and lawyer,

Raphael Lemkin, developed
the concept of genocide

as a crime in international law,

and he did so largely
on the basis

of what happened
to the Armenians in 1915

and what happened to the Jews
in Europe

under Nazism in the 1940s.

The United Nations General
Assembly proclaimed genocide

a crime under
the Law of Nations.

One by one, the representatives
of 21 nations

signed this new document,

called the International
Convention

for the Prevention
and Punishment of Genocide.

After the Second World War

when the Holocaust
was recognized as such,

Armenians mobilized
once again around this idea

that Turkey should equally
recognize the crime it did.

The 50th anniversary
of the genocide

was a little bit
of a magic number.

People start to talk about,
"Hey, are we going to do

something to reawaken
this event from its dormancy?"

And a lot of Armenians
at the time thought,

"If we don't do it now,
on the 50th anniversary,

it will be forgotten forever."

This created a new dynamic,

pushing for a decade of struggle

through political means,
peaceful means,

demanding Turkey
to recognize the genocide

and demanding also to give back

Armenian territories
occupied as a result.

The Turkish
government knows very well

that, in the Treaty of Sèvres,

that Armenia was awarded
a larger piece of land

that would be, today,

part of northeastern Turkey

with an outlet to the Black Sea.

The decade
of peaceful struggle

did not reach any results,

and in 1975, we have
Armenian militants

carrying out violent attacks
against Turkish diplomats.

Armenian terrorists
targeted people

in the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

Those are the very people
who are in charge

of this campaign of denial.

So you have this period
of terrorism

that does bring
a lot of publicity,

because, unfortunately,
the media listens

when there's violence.

But it also made Turkey
even more energized

in fighting Armenian
efforts for justice.

If you have had
the experience of violence

that was never acknowledged,

you cannot heal.

The wound is open
for the Armenian

because, in order
for someone to grieve

and come to terms
with the trauma,

it has to be acknowledged
in the first place,

whereas it's been 100 years,

but of course,
that time can never lapse.

Because of the lack
of acknowledgment,

you do not allow
those people to move on.

I feel like there
should be a shot here,

but there's not a shot here
yet, for me, anyway,

'cause there's
so much stuff around,

but I think there will be one.

I'm terrible at being patient.

And what is a shot to you?

Basically, I got an
e-mail from one of the producers

saying, "We're doing this movie.
We've been thinking about

bringing in
a conflict photographer

to photograph this
as if it were real..."

-And action! Go!

"...and to give a different,
broader angle on the story

than just the kind of
Mikael-Ana-Chris triangle."

No, I don't actually
think that,

because so many of the people
who are involved in this,

this is their story, too,

and so this is not just a movie

for a lot of the people
involved in making this movie.

This is a cause.

This is a passion.

This is a story that they've,
in some cases,

either been wanting to see
or wanting to tell

their entire lives.

-Vanadzor, Lori.
-I knew you were from Vanadzor,

-but --
-I'm from Vanadzor.

When Turks occupied Vanadzor,

they said, in Turkish,

they couldn't get into our city,

so they call it Gharakilisa.

It means "black stone."

So they call it black
because they couldn't get in.

There was a lot of killing.

So I'm proud where I'm from.

There are a lot of Armenians
in photojournalism,

and maybe this is over-thinking
things a little bit,

but it's this kind of
need to provide evidence,

this need to document
things that are happening,

because we all grew up
with this denial.

I don't remember
learning about the genocide.

I feel like I always knew
about the genocide.

I do remember the moment
where I realized

that genocide denial
was a real thing.

I had written my sixth
or seventh grade history report

on the Armenian genocide,
and my teacher said,

"That never happened.
You made that up."

There were meetings in school,
and it was a lot of drama.

But I think that need
to be believed,

that need to teach people,

I think that may have
something to do

with why so many of us
are photojournalists.

You know, I think we're
kind of over-represented

for the size
of our actual population

in photography.

This is the thing that every
Armenian child is instilled with

is the fact that,
if we don't talk about it,

if we're not obstreperous

and if we're not prepared to
actually keep this issue alive,

there is absolute no reason

why the rest of the world
would remember it.

Genocide is ultimately
about erasure,

and denial is a way
of sealing that erasure.

Did you cast me just because
I'm half-Turkish?

No.

It's because I thought you would
be perfect for the part.

But being Turkish didn't hurt.

Ah, didn't hurt, no.

You know, you never asked me
what I thought of the history.

What is there to think?

Well, do I believe
it happened, a genocide?

-Well, I'm not sure it matters.
-No --

I was aware that a film
had attempted to be made

on "The Forty Days
of Musa Dagh."

MGM had commissioned a script

and that they were about
to go into production.

I think Rouben Mamoulian
was going to direct it,

and then it was shut down
by the State Department.

I felt that my film, "Ararat,"
could be made in Canada

and that we wouldn't have
resistance, but we did, in fact.

There was a very pointed meeting
right before production

where a representative of
the Turkish community in Canada

wanted a meeting with
the producer, Robert Lantos,

and myself and my wife,
Arsinée Khanjian.

And we all got together
in this conference room,

and he basically made
the most extraordinary threat,

which was if we made the film,

he said he couldn't guarantee

that the Armenian
community in Turkey

wouldn't feel the effects of it.

And our jaws just dropped,

and we all looked at each other
and went, "Is that a threat?"

I mean, that just seemed --
It seemed so egregious

that this person would
ask for this meeting

and then come up
with this threat, you know?

And Robert, you know, responded
and said, "Well, you know,

there's nothing that you can do

to stop this film
from being made.

It's being made.
We're going ahead with this."

And, you know,
the meeting was over,

but I then began to receive,
like, hundreds of letters.

A retired general
from the Turkish Army,

a lawyer from Istanbul,
a Consular,

another retired colonel
from the Turkish Army.

And they're all
exactly the same.

Basically, they're saying
that I'm harming the interests

of the country I'm living in
and indeed the interests

of Armenians in Armenia, Turkey,
and various places in the world

by making this film.

And then, to top it all off --

-This is before production?
-This is before production.

And then this book came out,

which is called
"Ararat Master Propaganda Work."

And the theory of this work,
which is in Turkish,

but another version
exists in English,

which was sent to, like,

Turkish embassies
all over the world

so the diplomats could
actually brace themselves

for what was about to come out.

Basically, it's an analysis
of my career up to this point,

the box office
of my various films,

various things that have
been said about my movies,

how the Academy Award
nominations

for the "Sweet Hereafter"
were part of this plan.

And it's a theory
that this film,

in fact, perhaps
my whole career,

is part of this covert plan
by the Armenian community

as a alternate form
of terrorism.

It was cultural terrorism,

in fact, art-film terrorism.

So this came out
at the same time

that we were being threatened.

I had received a couple
of death notices.

And then, of course, I mean,
this all culminated when --

The film was distributed
in 40 countries.

We weren't expecting that
it would find distribution

in Turkey, but a very brave
distributor did take it on.

And then the Gray Wolves,
this ultra-nationalist group,

threatened to bomb any theaters
that were showing the film,

so it was pulled from
theatrical distribution.

Look, I never heard about
any of this stuff

when I was growing up, you know?

I did some research
for the part.

From what I read,
there were deportations, and...

lots of people died,
Armenians and Turks.

It was World War I.

Turkey wasn't at war
with the Armenians,

I mean, just like Germany
wasn't at war with the Jews.

They were citizens. They were
expecting to be protected.

Even talking about it now,
15 years after I made the film,

I just feel this sense
of...it's so improbable,

and yet it's been a huge part
of every Armenian's upbringing,

that you're dealing with
this dark, menacing force

of denialist mentality.

You know, the fact
that you have to explain it,

the fact that you have
to position it

is so enraging,

and yet it's part
of our condition,

and I think it makes us
feel unusual.

It makes us somewhat
deformed as a people.

-How do you mean?
-Because we have to defend

the most essential part
of our own history

against a perpetrator
that continues to deny,

that continues to put
massive amounts of money

into actively denying this.

And it's actually a miracle
that our voices come out at all

given the resources
of this government

to systematically suppress this

and to try and say that
this could not have happened.

Retroactive.

So it's -- Even the Pope
has been making a mistake

saying that it's genocide.

Can I just see it
one more time? No one's looking.

So what does this
book say, basically?

Anti-genocide?

And what do they say?
What do the Turks say?

Or what does this book say?

It's okay.

Yes, yes, yes, of course.
I mean, look, everyone --

That's what the Ambassador
and this book say?

Says that what the Armenians --

The Armenian rebels
were killing Muslims?

Yeah.

Yeah. But don't you think,

because the Ambassador
gave you this book,

they have an agenda?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's an enormous
amount of pressure on everybody

to present this story

as something that is open to
discussion or possibly untrue.

There are not two sides
to every story.

Stories are much more complex.

There are multiple perspectives
and opinions and views.

That doesn't mean
that they're all true.

Tell me about how the pressure

from the Turkish government
impacted your film.

Only pressure I've ever felt
from the Turkish government

directly is what they've done
to PBS,

and, you know, they've attacked
it at several different levels.

There were about
10 congressmen, senators,

I'm not sure of whose
names those were,

because this was
not made public,

who told PBS to drop
my show completely.

When PBS aired my film,
they decided

to have a panel discussion
after the film

where they had several
people on the panel,

Tonir Akhjan, Peter Balakian,

a man from Turkey
who I don't know,

and a historian named
Justin McCarthy,

who is the most vocal
American professor

who speaks out that
the genocide didn't happen.

This is really propaganda
masquerading as history.

It is true that the Armenians
suffered terribly.

The difficulty is, by only
presenting half of a story,

by only showing you
the Armenian dead,

they make it appear
like a genocide.

The Armenians did
suffer terribly,

but the Muslims,
the Turks, and the Kurds,

they suffered equally as badly.

And by skipping that,
by not putting that in,

they have made what was
actually closer to a civil war

or perhaps a mutual genocide

appear like a slaughter
of one group by another.

This movie, unfortunately --
This program, unfortunately,

is historically
extremely inaccurate.

If you're dealing, for example,

with something like
denial or revisionism,

you can give voices
to these people,

but you need to
give them context

and sort of quarantine them,

because, otherwise, you allow
that doubt to grow

in the mind of the viewer.
You plant this little seed

that, well,
maybe it didn't happen.

And then the next time
someone says,

"You know, I heard about
the Armenian genocide,"

"Oh, yeah, I heard about
that, too, but wasn't that --

There's something.
It was controversial, right?

Like, maybe it happened.
Maybe it didn't happen."

And right there,
the story has been damaged.

You don't say,
"Oh, the Holocaust."

"Oh, yeah, the Holocaust. Wait.
Did the Holocaust --

Are you sure the
Holocaust happened?"

That's not
part of the narrative.

That's not part
of the conversation,

but it is with the genocide.

PBS' response
to the accusations was,

"Well, we believe the genocide
is settled history,

but we wanted to have
this conversation,

because it shows you
the complexity of the issue."

Not only has Turkey been able
to create an environment

where those who speak publicly
view it

as something just too difficult
a mountain to overcome,

but Turkey has also
damaged the story,

so either they don't
report on it at all,

or they do report on it
in a dishonest way.

Being a more
broad-based historian

who's written many books
but just being labeled a denier,

I mean, how does
that make you feel?

Nobody likes having enemies.

Nobody likes receiving threats
by e-mail or by mail.

And no one likes
especially when they --

In years gone by,
they would threaten families

and things like that.

As a historian, the thing
that bothers me the most is

when people won't talk,

when they simply use terms
like "genocide denier" to say,

"We won't deal with him
because he is this,"

and then they say,
"No, forget it.

We don't ever listen to him."

I'd like to see a real debate
that goes on.

What is genocide?

It's a legal term
in legal international law.

It's based on the Genocide
Convention of 1948

that was approved
by the United Nations.

The Convention stresses
the element of intent.

The Armenian position is that
the Ottoman government

sought to destroy
the Armenian people

and used the war situation
to accomplish this goal.

The evidence I've examined
does not support

that thesis.

Everyone had known
that many Armenians

and other Christian groups

had died in World War I,

and we didn't
really think much about

what happened to the Muslims.

Partly, that's due to just
a Western prejudice, I'm afraid.

People just didn't think
about the Muslims.

I found that almost 3 million
Muslims, most of them Turks,

had also died in World War I.

What we have here
is a shared pain

of both Armenians and Turks.

How would you describe the
Muslim pain or the Turkish pain?

Well, the Muslim pain, I would
say, is much deeper and greater.

I don't want two different
pains to compete,

who suffered the most,

but because they lost
the huge empire,

and Armenian issue
is very much the end game

of that massive ethnic
cleansing of Muslims

from the Balkans
and the Caucasus.

Basically, everyone
killed everyone.

It was a horrible, inhuman time

in which all sides
killed all the other sides.

Armenians had
a revolutionary movement

that had been active
for several decades.

When war broke out, they made
common cause with the Russians

who were invading
over the Caucasus.

A major ethnic
cleansing of Muslims

carried out by Russian
and Armenian troops.

The Turks decided
to relocate and deport

the Armenians from the areas
where fighting was going on

so that the revolutionaries
were not of any support.

It was what demographers call
forced migration of --

The exact number is about
around 600,000 Armenians.

The Armenians with money
were allowed to buy tickets

on the Baghdad Railroad,

so they were spared
some of the worst aspects

of the deportation.

The worst suffering
of Armenians

wasn't in the area
the Ottomans relocated them.

It was where they lived
with the Russians,

where up to 50% of them died.

Many Armenians died
of disease, hunger.

Most of the Armenians were
butchered by Kurdish tribes,

and some of the Armenians
were also killed

by Ottoman government officials.

But the legal description
of the suffering

should not be the term genocide.

A civil war within
an international war.

A war of mutual extermination.

There is a term called pogrom.

One might call what happened
to Armenians as pogrom.

It has become kind of
a question of identity,

I think, for the Armenians.

I would call it holocaust envy.

People who believe that
if they make enough trouble,

Turkey will give them
the eastern provinces of Turkey,

which they call Armenia.

These are nationalists
that have their agenda.

The Turks do not want
to cheapen the term genocide.

According to international law,

there are only
three genocides --

Holocaust, Rwanda,
and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

There are no fourth genocide.

So, when you hear these
arguments refuting the genocide,

-what do you think?
-It's --

Well, there's an aspect
of further blaming the victim.

There's an aspect of trying
to wash the whole thing

within the World War
as they, you know --

Look, if it wasn't for
the Nuremberg trials,

we might still be
talking about this

having to do with the Holocaust,
as well,

because that was
during the World War.

They could have said, "It was
war. People died, you know?

They tried to revolt
in the ghettos in Warsaw,

and, you know,
so we had to go into Poland."

Like, they could -- Any kind
of excuse can be made, right?

But the truth is,
they're all excuses.

Many of the Turkish
officials say,

"A lot of people died,
but it was during war."

But then, these aren't
soldiers fighting.

I mean, you have to separate
the soldiers who die

from the civilians who die.

Even if you looked at
the genocide as being provoked

by some kind of, you know,
fifth column

who were seen to be, you know,
betrayers of the Turks,

even if you believe that,

you couldn't explain
the Armenian genocide,

because the Armenian genocide
was getting rid of everybody,

not just Armenians who were
in the areas bordering Russia.

It was Armenians
through the entire empire

who were being killed.

The Turk's here,
and then he shoots him.

Okay?
He should be closer in by now.

Were there certain
revolts in certain areas

because the Army was coming,

and they knew that people
were being killed

and taken to the desert?
Fuck, yeah,

and there should've been more.

But that doesn't mean
that it wasn't a genocide.

Exterior, lower
encampment, Musa Dagh, dawn.

A fog has blown in from the sea,

and Turkish soldiers appear
from among the trees.

You don't run after
someone for 100 years

for them to just turn around
and go, "Fine. I did it. What?"

You know, it's not just
about them admitting it.

It's about justice.
We want justice.

Surrender these weapons.

Come down,
or we will kill you all.

All we ask
is to live in peace here.

If you're a victim of genocide,

how can there be healing
without acknowledgment?

If you don't respect me, if you
don't want to listen my story,

and you tell me you only
recognize what happened

as a genocide,
that is not going to end

in a reconciliation
or in a peace.

The Republic of Turkey
will not agree

or consider 1915 as genocide

because it is going to make
Armenia comfortable and happy.

We can only come together

if we both recognize each other

as a moral human being

and then recognize
our shortcomings

and then create
a shared understanding

what took place in 1915.

The killing
of the memory of the event

is a double killing.

Many of us
in the genocide studies field

have said the denial of genocide
is the final stage of genocide,

because it seeks
to demonize the victims

and rehabilitate
the perpetrators.

In 2005, the International
Association of Genocide Scholars

issued an open letter to the
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan

and in that letter,
the Association outlined

the irrefutable evidence

on the Armenian Genocide

over the past hundred years.

It's an extraordinarily
destructive, emotionally

and psychologically
wounding, reality

for an Armenian
community worldwide,

10 million people, to have
to deal with the assault

of the perpetrator regime's
legacy a century later.

In fact, look.
It's one of the most extreme

situations of its kind.

To have an entire nation live
in an alternative universe,

you know, and denying
the genocide is almost like

an entire nation denying
that man was on the moon.

Everybody knows it happened.

It's time for Turkey
to acknowledge this.

If they're calling on the West
to support Bosnian Muslims

against Serbian genocide
in the '90s,

then they should begin
by recognizing

that their precursor empire,
the Ottomans,

carried out genocide.

And nothing infuriates me more
than being in a crowd of Turks

and hearing them
suddenly start talking about

the "so-called genocide,"
soezde soykirim.

I breathe fire.
It was a Soykirim,

a genocide with a capital S.
For all I know,

I could be banned from going
to Turkey for saying that.

You know, if you're in Turkey,

and you're using
the word "soykirim,"

that's dangerous.

Basically, if you give
a talk in Turkey or elsewhere,

people look to see
whether you're using

the word "genocide" or not.

If you use the word genocide,
Turks stop listening to you.

If you don't use
the word genocide,

Armenians stop listening to you.

So, for a while, I said,
"I'm not going to use the word,

because I want people to listen
to what I have to say."

But then it was
the assassination of Hrant Dink,

who was a good friend of mine
and a colleague, in 2007.

After that, I said,
"All bets are off.

I am calling it what it is."

For eight decades,

the struggle for the recognition
of the Armenian genocide

was mainly taking place
in diaspora communities --

in Lebanon, in Syria,
in Iraq, in Europe, in France,

especially in North America.

In Turkey, Armenians
didn't have a voice,

and the first Armenian
which claimed a place

in the Turkish public space
was Hrant Dink.

Hrant Dink established
"Agos" newspaper.

It is the first important
newspaper that published news

in both Turkish and Armenian.

What he did was
to address his discourse

to the average Turkish citizen.

He said, "Brother, sister,
let me talk to you.

There were Armenians
living here before.

There are the ruins of a school,
of a church, of a monastery.

What happened to them?
Where did they go?"

And by doing that,
he was touching the taboos

of the Turkish republic.

And afterwards, he was invited
to the office

of the governor
of Istanbul province.

And during that meeting,
the governor was not there.

The deputy was there, and there
were two other people present.

They didn't identify.
They didn't tell who they were,

but probably, they represented
the secret services.

They said, "You know,
what you did was very bad.

You shouldn't touch
those wounds.

You shouldn't talk
about the past like this.

Maybe someone will be
irritated and come and kill you

while you are walking
down the street."

I did have talks
with him, and I said,

"Look, things are
not looking good.

Why don't you come
to the United States

and stay here, away
from Turkey for a while?"

He said

"I feel like a fish out of water
outside of Turkey."

And in a way,
I think he shamed all of us

with his love
for his ancestral lands

that he wanted to be there.

For that,
he got shot in the head

by a young activist

who was later photographed
in Turkish police stations,

flanked by the Turkish policemen

who had allegedly gone
and captured him.

For me, Hrant
is like a biblical figure.

He's the perfect sacrifice.

The moment he was killed,
he managed to pass his message

to the entire
Turkish population,

because, for the first time,
nearly 100 years later,

100,000 Turkish citizens
went to the streets

calling, "We are all Armenians.
We are all Hrant Dink."

And by this,
the Armenian question

became part of the struggle

for democracy
and pluralism in Turkey.

So Hrant succeeded
in passing his message,

and the price for that
was his life.

The trial is still,
all these years later,

still going on,

and there are all kinds
of shadowy figures.

They know who was
the trigger man,

but they don't know who
set up this assassination.

Nine years and no justice.

It's exactly the same.

Again, here is a violence
that has been committed,

in this case against one person,

but nevertheless, it is very
symbolic as to who he was.

And the perpetrators are,
once again,

not held accountable for
the violence they committed.

I served the United States
loyally for all these years,

and rarely did I have a moment

when I disagreed
with U.S. policy.

There were some, but it was only
in my last assignment,

when I was sent out
as Ambassador to Armenia,

that I came to grips

with an issue
that was so monstrous

that I found myself disobeying
the policy of my own government,

which was not something
I ever wanted to do,

set out to do,
or had any pleasure in doing.

Six months into my assignment,

I was invited back
to the United States

to talk to various centers
of Armenian population.

And in Watertown, Massachusetts,
somebody asked me,

"Why is it that I have
no uncles or aunts,

and I don't know
who my grandparents were?

How can that be?"

Well this put me into
a terrible, terrible dilemma,

because, after all,
the U.S. Ambassador is charged

with carrying out the policy
of his government.

But the U.S. government,
out of deference

to our NATO ally, Turkey,
had a --

I wouldn't call it
even a policy --

It was a taboo, an utter
and complete taboo

on saying or much less
doing anything

about this historical event.

Do I spin this question,

or so evade the question

that it's deeply misleading,

or do I break the taboo,
which I knew existed,

and try to talk about it,
and deal with the consequences?

-And your response?
-Well, I said,

"Yes, I believe
it was a genocide."

After I returned to Armenia,
the first day I got back,

there was a telegram
from Condoleezza Rice

on my desk,
two telegrams, in fact --

one giving me the text
of the apology

that I would now
proceed to issue

and put on the website,

and the other actually
having me apologize

to the State Department
and explain my action.

I'm surprised
that you apologized for that.

I had no choice. I was ordered
to issue this apology.

Now, in the other telegram
back to the State Department,

I did not apologize
on the substance of the matter.

And what was the response?

The response
was roughly this --

"You are the U.S. Ambassador,

and even if you're sitting
in the bathroom,

what you say
has to be U.S. policy."

It was a little more lurid
than that,

but that was basically it.

I think the failure
of the U.S. government

to simply acknowledge
the total ethical reality

of the Armenian Genocide

does represent a very sad
act of cowardice.

From the outside,
if you ask yourself

how the most powerful
country in the world

can cave on an ethical
issue of this kind,

you do find it
quite astonishing.

For those of you
who aren't aware,

there was a genocide
that did take place

against the Armenian people.

It is one of the situations

where we have seen
a constant denial

on the part
of the Turkish government

and others that this occurred.

It has become a sore spot
diplomatically.

Whether it was President Obama,

President Clinton,
or the first President Bush,

all of them,
before they became president,

said that they would acknowledge
the Armenian Genocide.

But once they became president,

they realized the pressure
that's put on this country

to not use that term.

So, essentially,
Turkey is able to censor

the most powerful person

not just in this country
but in the world.

If you look at a map,
it all becomes very clear

what Turkey is.

Turkey's listening posts and its
Air Force bases and so forth

are right there,
butt up against --

I mean, anytime you want
to send anything into Russia

or into Afghanistan
or down into Iraq or Iran,

you've got Turkey there
to launch things.

Turkey has
incredible geopolitical leverage

over Europe
and over the United States

and, in fact,
as far as I can see,

at no time more so
than right now.

Europe is shaking in its boots

worrying about
the flow of refugees

from Syria through Turkey

and is desperate for Turkey
to help control that situation.

And as long as they have
that kind of power,

they can basically exact
any terms that they want.

A moral argument
should never be trumped

by geopolitical
concerns, you know?

Something like a genocide
should never be negotiated,

should never be political
capital for anyone,

because it takes us down
to a level beyond humanity.

How important was it for you
to put Musa Dagh in this story?

You know, talking
about the genocide

didn't necessarily
have to have Musa Dagh.

Similar to
"Hotel Rwanda," you want a story

that focuses on the human spirit

and endurance
and good against evil

and the capacity of man
to stand up to that.

And I think Musa Dagh
certainly encapsulates that.

And just in dramatic
story terms,

it was obvious to me
that you had to show

it wasn't just people
getting marched

into the desert
and slaughtered.

People stood up against it
and triumphed.

As you come up over this hill,
this is the bowl here.

This is your last refuge,
and in between those two peaks

-is the Mediterranean Sea.
-I see.

We're going to put
the sea in there.

I see.

If a nation does not
face its own history,

it cannot be
a democratic society.

Turkish government persecuted
its own intellectuals,

because United States
supports them.

Turkish government denies
the Armenian Genocide

and persecutes the individual
like myself and the others

because they are
counting on the support

of United States government.

And United States
makes a big mistake

regarding its own interests,
its own security policy.

If you ask me, if you want
to understand Yugoslavia,

if you want
to understand Rwanda,

if you want to understand
any other mass atrocities

what is happening today,

you should really look into
the Armenian Genocide, also.

You will see a microcosmos
of genocide

in that area in that time.

Without facing history,

without acknowledging
historic wrongdoings,

there cannot be stability
in the region.

The main problem in
the Middle East is the trust.

History is not in the past.

Past is not past
in the Middle East.

Past is the present.

The Arabs, the Kurds,
the Armenians,

they are all looking
from the window of history

towards each other.

They still consider Turks

as the murderers of 1915.

As long as Turkey
does not acknowledge

its role in the past,

you cannot get stability
in the region.

So, Joe, how are you feeling
your last day in Madrid now?

That's a wrap.
That's a wrap today.

That's a wrap.

All right, guys. Help the work,
boys, please, behind me.

-All right. We are rehearsing.

So, tell me what's
happening today in particular,

which is the last time I get to
ask you what's happening today.

This is...

Ana and Mikael have made love
in the Armenian hotel,

and she's coming back
to sort things out with Chris.

He's sending a telegraph report
to New York

about the death march
and the atrocities he's seen.

All right. Here we go.
And roll cameras.

And action.

"A young child tried
to pull her to her feet,

and as she lay
on that dirt road,

a Turkish calvary man rode up
and dispatched her

with a single shot." Write it.

Write it.

So, what do you
think the Turkish government

is going to say
when your movie comes out?

Clearly, they're not
going to agree with it.

You know, they haven't --
There's been nothing

that has shaken them
from this notion that,

"Oh, this wasn't a genocide.
Bad things happen to everyone."

I mean, they can
barely admit that,

but no admission that there was
governmental planning for this

or orders or so forth.

We have to beg nations

to recognize genocide.

I lost 11 members of my family,

and I have to beg people
to believe me.

That's what hurts you most.

-Mr. Myers, New York is waiting.
-Ana.

We must go, Chris.

-Ana!
-Mr. Myers, New York.

We will lose the connection.

"Armenian men are being
slaughtered in their villages.

Their women and children
are being driven into the desert

to be murdered!"

Send that!

The Turkish soldiers,
they took our clothing.

They took our jewelry.

They robbed us. They killed us.

They raped the women.

I still have some nightmares
to this day.

Okay, cut!

These guys are too --

How do you feel
about being the guy

who's bringing
the story to the world

that's been so oft repressed?

You know, it's
a frightening challenge.

The onus
of telling that story

and particularly
with the Armenian diaspora

around the world
and what that will mean to them

and opening up
the debate about this

and hopefully putting to bed
this whole thing of,

"Did a genocide happen or not?"

I mean, the soul
of the whole Armenian nation

is burnt by this.

And so, yeah,
I hope we've pulled it off.

How close to the end are you?

Oh, so close.
Moments away.

We are. Moments.
Seconds, in fact.

Hey!

What we've done together here
is a historic thing.

People will go back and look
at this movie and say,

"This is what happened
in 1915 and 1916 in Turkey."

And we've tried with all honesty
to tell that story.

Kirk Kerkorian was unwavering

in his desire to make this film.

He would be so proud right now,
day 72 of 72, that we wrapped,

and it's better
than we ever imagined.

This was not an easy road,

but we're all a part of it,

every single one of you.

Go and tell the story.

Tell the story
to the rest of the world.

You form a family
when you make a movie.

And I am so deeply grateful.
And I love youse all.

Thank you.

It's very, very sad.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I just can't go on anymore.