The Promise (2016) on Netflix
PG-1320162h 13mDramaHistoryRomance
In the Ottoman Empire, Mikael, an apothecary, promises to marry Maral for the dowry that funds medical school. In Constantinople he falls in love with Ana, an Armenian artist raised in Paris.
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- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb6.1/10180,593 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes51%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mikael Boghosian works as an apothecary in Siroun, an Armenian village in the Ottoman Empire. To cover the cost of medical school he agrees to marry Maral, the daughter of a prosperous neighbor, and takes her family's dowry of 400 gold coins, which lets him travel to Constantinople and enroll at the Imperial School of Medicine. There he befriends Emre, whose father holds high rank in the Ottoman government, and through his uncle meets Ana Khesarian, an Armenian artist who grew up in Paris. Ana is involved with Chris Myers, an American correspondent for the Associated Press. Mikael is drawn to Ana as World War I tensions rise.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Promise (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian donated the entire $100 million budget of The Promise, expecting no profit; as of 2017 it was the highest budget of any film about the Armenian genocide.
- Before its release, after only three festival screenings, IMDb had over 86,000 ratings for The Promise, 55,126 of them one-star and 30,639 ten-star, which commentators called an orchestrated campaign by Armenian genocide deniers answered by an Armenian counter-campaign.
- The film's song "The Promise" was the final single released by Chris Cornell, who died less than a month after the film's U.S. release.
- Because Kirk Kerkorian donated the whole budget, the Turkish government could not pressure the studio into canceling The Promise as it had done with other productions; Terry George said the film would not exist without Kerkorian, who died in 2015 before seeing it finished.
- Producers cut The Promise to a PG-13 so teenagers and children could see it, removing scenes that would otherwise have earned an R rating, which meant having no extensive footage of violence.
- Terry George struggled to cast Ana and chose Charlotte Le Bon after seeing her in a Canadian fashion magazine and meeting her, wanting a strong, independent character who could attract two very different types of men.
- A scene in The Promise was inspired by the death of Alan Kurdi, who was fleeing the Middle East for Europe, to draw parallels between Armenians fleeing the genocide and modern refugees.
