In 1915, Ottoman Turkey began the systematic killing and deportation of its Armenian population, an event Turkey's government has denied ever since. German filmmaker Eric Friedler builds his case for NDR television as a direct answer to a challenge from Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who told genocide historians to "prove it." Actors read aloud the original words of 23 witnesses, German and American diplomats and other nationals stationed in the Ottoman Empire at the time, drawn from consular dispatches and eyewitness accounts, paired with archival footage and documents not previously shown on screen. The film moves from the killings themselves into the decades-long Turkish campaign to deny them, treating denial as part of the historical record rather than a separate controversy. Nobel laureate Günter Grass praised the film after its April 2010 broadcast, and it went on to screenings at festivals and a showing to members of the US Congress. The witness testimony, read verbatim rather than dramatized, is what carries the film's argument.