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Filmmaker Joe Berlinger meets with historians and scholars to discuss the Armenian Genocide and the continuing denial by the Turkish government of it ever happening.

Academy Award® nominated director Joe Berlinger embeds himself on the epic film set of Terry George's A Promessa (2016) to take an unwavering look at the Armenian Genocide. Historians, scholars and filmmakers come together in Berlinger's cinematic exploration of the tangled web of responsibility that has driven a century of denial by the Turkish government and its strategic allies. Intent to Destroy (2017) is a timely reckoning with the large-scale suppression of a historical tragedy. Berlinger confronts the fraught task of shedding light on the Armenian Genocide - whose witnesses and descendants are still fighting to be officially acknowledged as such by the international community - how it was carried out during World War I as the reign of the Ottoman Empire drew to a close, and how it laid the groundwork for the genocides that followed.—Tribeca Film Festival 2017

After several failed attempts, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Terry George finally directs A Promessa (2016), the first mainstream fiction feature about the 1915 Armenian Genocide in which 1.5 million people were killed by Ottoman Turks. Recognizing the highly politicized nature of shooting a sweeping First World War - era epic about one of the most contested events in contemporary history, documentary legend Joe Berlinger embeds with the production. Combining emotional behind-the-scenes experiences of its cast with rarely seen archival materials of the atrocities being dramatized, Berlinger restores the human dimension of a dark history. As he digs deeper into the genocide's suppression, he turns up an astonishing campaign by the Turkish government to control the narrative of the massacre, one that reaches directly to Toronto's own film community. This thoroughly original film-within-a-film lays bare the plight of a people, both past and present, still seeking acknowledgement.—Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2017

Pulling back the curtain on censorship in Hollywood due to U.S. government pressure to appease a strategic ally, Intent to Destroy (2017) embeds with a historic feature production as a springboard to explore the violent history of the Armenian Genocide and legacy of Turkish suppression and denial over the past century.—Maryland Film Festival 2017