The main characters and their storyline is fiction. This includes the love triangle between Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), a Paris-raised Armenian; her American journalist boyfriend Chris Myers (Christian Bale); and the Armenian medical student, Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), who falls in love with her. The love story was created by screenwriters Terry George and Robin Swicord. However, much like Doctor Zhivago, the major political events going on around these characters are largely factual. This includes the rounding up of Christian Armenians, which started the Armenian Genocide in April 1915. Whole villages were subsequently wiped out, as Mikael learns was the fate of his own village in the movie.

Yes. During our investigation into The Promise true story, we learned that the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge it as a genocide, saying that it was simply a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims (the latter of whom were the overwhelming majority). Most Turks do not believe that the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkish military was a genocide. In fact, many don't acknowledge it at all, and others will only go as far as to call it a massacre. One reason it is not talked about in Turkey is because it is illegal to discuss the Armenian Genocide. With roughly 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire prior to the killings, it's hard to deny that the extermination of 1.5 million of them was not a systematic attempt to wipe out an entire people. -History.com

The fraudulent IMDB ratings are part of a propaganda campaign by the Turkish government and Turkish people to discredit The Promise before its release, mainly in an effort to deter people from seeing it. Armenians have countered by giving the movie high IMDB ratings in order to encourage people to see it and in turn bring awareness to this largely unacknowledged blight on Turkey's past.

At the time of this article (two days prior to the movie's release), there are 123,112 IMDB ratings for The Promise. That's more than for The Secret Life of Pets, one of the top grossing movies of 2016. Of the total votes, 61,416 are 1-star ratings and 59,966 are 10-star ratings. All of the ratings have so far happened prior to The Promise's release. The movie did screen at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2016, where there were only three showings. However, this opened the door to voting on IMDB, leading to the flood of fake ratings and the battle between Turkish deniers and Armenians.

While Turkey has been successful in stopping other movies about the Armenian Genocide from being made, including MGM's plans for Clark Gable to star in a 1930s film adaptation of Franz Werfel's novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The Promise fortunately found its way to the big screen. This is mainly because it was independently financed by businessman Kirk Kerkorian, the former owner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who is of Armenian descent. In researching The Promise true story, we learned that Kerkorian passed away in 2015 just as production was beginning on the movie, which cost almost $100 million to make before tax breaks. It is one of the most expensive independently financed movies of all time. -Variety.com

As The Promise waited to close a distribution deal, producer Eric Esrailian grew worried that buyers were being scared away by the movie's subject matter. "I'll just say that there are some studios that have business interests in Turkey, and you can form your own opinion." The Promise did eventually land a distributor in Open Road Films. However, the controversy is likely not over. Director Atom Egoyan, whose 2002 film Ararat featured a Hollywood director attempting to make a movie about the Armenian Genocide, felt the full weight of the denialist lobby. "It's going to be a tough ride," Egoyan says. In his case, Ararat's distributor Miramax and the studio's then-owner, Disney, were targeted, with Miramax receiving so many email complaints that the studio's website crashed. -Variety.com

Yes. According to most Armenians, the genocide started when several hundred Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and sent on a death march through the desert on April 24, 1915. They were given no water or food, which resulted in hundreds dying. In reality, deportations of Armenians really began two weeks earlier on April 8 in Zeytun, but the 24th is the date most often cited.

Yes. Talaat Pasha, one of the leaders of the Young Turks, is considered to be the main architect behind the Armenian Genocide. U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr. said that Talaat Pasha and other Turkish officials made no attempt to conceal the real purpose of the deportations. He includes several conversations he had with Talaat Pasha in his book Ambassador Morgenthau's Story. In the book, Pasha is forthright with his intention for the deportations to be a guise for extermination. Abdulahad Nuri, an official under Pasha in charge of the deportations, would also later testify that Pasha told him that the goal of the deportations was "extermination."

Yes. While exploring The Promise true story, we learned that this scenario is indeed based in historical fact. In the movie, Mikael (Oscar Isaac) and Ana (Charlotte Le Bon) link up with a large group of refugees who are forced to hold off the Turks as they escape down the side of a mountain to the coast. The French Navy has come to their aide with Chris (Christian Bale) in tow. In real life, some 4,000 Armenian civilians successfully fought off Ottoman Turkish forces for 53 days in 1915 after retreating to the highest town on Musa Dagh, a mountain in the Hatay province of Turkey near the Mediterranean Coast. Just as their ammo and food was almost gone, they escaped down the backside of the mountain and were rescued by the French Navy. The event inspired Franz Werfel to pen his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

Yes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, all of the profits from The Promise's theatrical run are going to be donated to nonprofit organizations, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation and other humanitarian and human rights organizations.

Dig deeper into The Promise movie true story by watching the videos below, including modern-day Turks denying the Armenian Genocide on camera. Then watch The Promise movie trailer.

• The Promise Official Movie Website