Survival Pictures has released a trailer for their highly-anticipated film The Promise starring Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Charlotte le Bon (The Walk) and Christian Bale (The Fighter), which has just been added to this year's TIFF lineup. The Promise takes place in 1914, when the Great War looms, the Ottoman Empire is crumbling, and the once-vibrant capital Constantinople (Istanbul) is about to be consumed by chaos.

The Promise is directed by Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) who wrote the story with Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). In addition to Isaac, le Bon, and Bale, the film stars Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Sarafyan, Jean Reno, James Cromwell, Daniel Giminez Cacho, and Marwan Kenzari. While the film will premiere at TIFF, the movie does not have a wide release date announced at this time, but you can watch the first trailer below.


Eric Esrailian, Mike Medavoy, Ralph Winter and William Horberg are producers for The Promise with Blue Jasmine DP Javier Aguirresarobe as cinematographer.

Oscar Isaac plays Michael Boghosian, a medical student determined to bring modern medicine back to Siroun, his ancestral village in Southern Turkey. There, Turkish Muslims and Armenian Christians have lived side by side for centuries. Christian Bale's character in the film is a photojournalist named Chris Myers, arrived only partly to cover geo-politics. He is mesmerized by an Armenian artist named Ana (Charlotte le Bon) that he accompanied from Paris after her father's sudden death.

A romantic rivalry explodes between the two men as Michael meets Ana and their shared Armenian heritage sparks an attraction, all as the local landscape is changing as the Turks join the war on the German side, turning the Empire violent against its ethnic minorities. The characters have conflicts, but must all find a way to survive.

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Image via Open Road Films