'The Promise' Makes Armenian Genocide Real Once More

Discuss the Holocaust, and everyone knows instantly what you're talking about. Millions of Jews, Jehova's Witnesses, LGBTQ individuals, disabled individuals and Roma were slaughtered ruthlessly by the Gestapo under Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Go a bit further back in history to 1915, a year after World War I happened, and suddenly, people become a little more tightlipped. The Armenian genocide of 1915 is one that screams for acknowledgement from Turkey, but one that is widely not even recognized as genocide because of the Turkish government's argument that plenty of Turks also died during that time span.

In The Promise, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the fall of 2016, the story of the Armenian genocide is explored with the complexities of a love triangle within it. The love triangle, according to Eric Esailian, was included as part of the story to help sell the history of the Armenian genocide.

“The love story was to make it accessible, because unlike the Holocaust and other more recent atrocities, there isn’t a baseline knowledge to build on,” he said.

Trailers for The Promise have been airing for a while on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and the film is one that has been fighting to be told for a while now. According to Esrailian, shortly before its premiere at TIFF, the film's entry on imdB.com was hit by internet trolls and given tens of thousands of one star reviews, which only convinced him that the film truly needed to be produced.

“At some point, you have to stand up and speak the truth," he said. "Spinning an alternate reality has been done now for 102 years.”

Although the film's premiere featured Hollywood heavyweights like Cher, who is also Armenian, Leonardo DiCaprio, George and Amal Clooney and Sylvester Stallone, it's likely Kim Kardashian's marketability that has pushed The Promise to the forefront. She has been an outspoken individual when it comes to acknowledging the Armenian genocide, and has even gone so far as to plead with President Barack Obama to actually use the term genocide when referring to the 1.5 million Armenians killed in 1915, to no avail. Obama instead used the term Meds Yeghern in spite of promises to acknowledge the Armenian genocide as such; President Trump has done the same.

There seems to be a sense of a culture that is not acknowledged as a result of the avoidance of the word genocide when it comes to the 1.5 Armenians killed in 1915, and even preteens in KZV Armenian School in San Francisco said that once the word genocide is used to discuss what happened 102 years ago, perhaps an overall recognition of the culture could occur.

“The Armenian Genocide -- it doesn't define Armenians. We have over 3,000 years of history. After people recognize the Armenian genocide we can move forward and have people recognize our culture,” eighth grader Karoleene Amanian said.

As for the Kardashians, Kim Kardashian said that she's always had a great deal of pride in her heritage and believes that people need to stand and recognize that the Armenian genocide actually happened in order to avoid history potentially repeating itself.

“I think it’s so important that people just acknowledge that something happened," Kardashian said. "Of course we can all get through it. We have no choice. But when you’re not recognized for something, that is when you’re fearful it could happen again, and that’s what so scary.”

The Promise, directed by Terry George and starring Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, and Charlotte Le Bon hits theaters in nationwide release April 28.