Belfast man Terry George is probably best known to Irish cinema-goers as the co-writer of In The Name of the Father and the writer-director of Some Mother's Son and Hotel Rwanda. So he's no stranger to controversy. His latest film is The Promise, set in 1914, during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. It stars Oscar Isaac, Charlotte le Bon and Christian Bale. Terry joined Seán Rocks on Arena and Seán asked him how familiar he was with the history of the Armenian genocide before he made The Promise.
"I read Samantha Power's book, Problem From Hell, and she covered it quite extensively, so I had a reasonable knowledge of it."
He was sent Robin Swicord's script, found himself moved by it and wanted to make it. Terry told Seán that Swicord's script, focusing on a love story set against a great political event, reminded him of similarly-themed films he'd grown up with, such as Dr Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter and the English Patient.
"I'd say 99.9% of the populations anywhere have no knowledge of [the Armenian genocide]"
Terry believes that the main reason the Armenian genocide is relatively unknown is due to the efforts of successive Turkish governments. The Turks, he says, actively interfered in two films on the subject, one in the 1930s and one in the 1970s. Naturally, Seán then asked him if there had been any attempt at interference with his own film. Following its screening to an audience of 3,000 at the Toronto Film Festival, Terry says that the film was negatively reviewed on IMDB.com a massive 55,000 times, leading him to suspect that people with an agenda were attempting to sabotage his film before it's even been released.
The Promise tells the story of a love triangle and Terry had to make sure that it was the story of the characters that took precedence.
"The love story has to pre-dominate – you know, that's the story you want the audience to invest in first off."
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