Michael Daly
Ben Kingsley and Josh Hartnett and Hera Hilmar surely would not have signed on to star in The Ottoman Lieutenant if they even imagined they would be parties to genocide denial.
And
screenwriter Jeff Stockwell—who is by every indication a very decent
person—says that everybody he spoke to in connection with the making of The Ottoman Lieutenant
was aware of the Turkish government’s longtime denial of responsibility
for the deliberate murder of 1.6 million innocent Armenians.
“The
desire to be sure we were not supporting that denial weighed on me and
everyone else I talked to who was hired on to the project—so much so
that the climax of the film is built around the leads interrupting a
death march,” Stockwell said in an email to The Daily Beast.
The movie—which came out in March and is reported by the website Box Office
Mojo to have taken in less than $250,000 in American theaters despite
its big-name cast—indeed has a scene where Turkish soldiers are herding
Armenian civilians on a death march, complete with summary executions.
