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The Promise
Mikael Boghosian is an apothecary who lives in the small Armenian village of Siroun in the southeast part of Turkey, within the Ottoman Empire. In order to help pay the expenses for medical school, he promises to marry Maral, the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople and attend the Imperial School of Medicine.
There, Mikael befriends Emre, the son of a high-ranking Ottoman official. Through his wealthy uncle, he also meets Ana Khesarian, an Armenian woman raised in Paris, who is involved with an American reporter for the Associated Press, Chris Myers. Mikael falls in love with Ana just as international tensions begin to rise with the outbreak of World War I.
Mikael temporarily manages to avoid conscription into the Ottoman Army through a medical student exemption with the help of Emre. When he, with Emre's help, tries to save his uncle from imprisonment during the roundups of April 24, 1915, he is detained and sent to a labor camp, while Emre is conscripted as a consequence for helping Mikael a second time after his father warned him not to.
Mikael eventually escapes the camp. Returning to his village, he finds that the townspeople of Turkish background have violently turned on their fellow townspeople of Armenian background. His parents, and particularly his mother, persuade him to marry Maral and seek refuge in a remote mountain cabin, where she soon becomes pregnant.
A difficult pregnancy leads Mikael to bring his wife back to the care of his mother in the village. There he learns that Ana and Christopher are at a nearby Red Cross facility, so he goes to seek their help for his family to escape the imminent Turkish threat.
Departing the mission with a group of orphans, they head back to Siroun to retrieve Mikael's family. Along the way, however, they encounter the site of a massacre. It soon becomes clear it's all of Siroun's inhabitants, including Mikael's family except his mother and cousin Yeva, killed by Ottoman troops. Mikael's wife is found with their unborn child cut out from her body.
Chris is captured by Ottoman soldiers and sent back to Constantinople, charged with being a spy for the Allied Powers and, while held at Selimiye Barracks, slated for execution by the authorities. With the help of Emre, and through the intercession of American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Chris is released and deported to Malta. Once there, he boards the French cruiser Guichen, as it prepares to set sail along the Ottoman coast. Emre's role in helping to save Chris is discovered and he is executed by firing squad.
Escaping pursuit, Mikael, Ana, and the orphans join a large group of refugees determined to fight off the Ottoman Army on Mount Musa Dagh. As they fend off repeated assaults, Mikael's mother succumbs to her wounds and is buried on the mountain. The refugees hold on long enough to escape on the back side to the coast as the Guichen comes to evacuate them. But as the lifeboats return to the ship, a Turkish artillery barrage throws Ana and Yeva, the young daughter of Mikael's uncle, overboard. Mikael jumps in after them and is able to rescue Yeva, but Ana drowns.
In a voice over, Mikael recounts that he adopted Yeva and together they settled in Watertown, Massachusetts while Chris was killed reporting the Spanish Civil War in 1938. During Yeva's wedding reception in 1942, with the now grown Armenian orphans in attendance, Mikael presides over a toast, wishing good fortune to their families and future generations to come.