The Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I in October 1914 sets off the chain of events this film traces through to the founding of the modern Middle East. Written and produced by Marty Callaghan, it follows the British campaign to seize Istanbul that instead became an eight-month siege at Gallipoli, where troops landing at Anzac Cove in 1915 were pinned on the beaches by Turkish defenders and the transport ship SS River Clyde came under fire before soldiers could even reach shore. From there the film moves to the Ottoman defeat in 1918 and the postwar carve-up, as Britain and France draw the borders of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq while the Turkish Republic emerges in 1923. Historian David Fromkin's description of the resulting settlement as 'the peace to end all peace' frames the film's argument that these decisions, driven as much by oil interests as strategy, set the terms for the region's conflicts and foreign interventions down to the present.