Russell Crowe’s directorial debut “The Water Diviner” opened in Australian and New Zealand cinemas on December 26 amid heated reactions by the Greek-Australians due to significant omissions and historical inaccuracies.

The historical fictional drama, directed by the famous Hollywood actor and written by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight, tells the story of a father traveling to pre-republican Turkey to find his three missing boys after the Battle Of Gallipoli, in the First World War.

However, Dr. Panagiotis Diamantis, a history professor in the University of Sydney, argues that, in its drive to create an anti-war message, the film ends up as “fantastic propaganda”, where victims become perpetrators and perpetrators become victims.

In an article in the Neos Kosmos newspaper, Prof. Diamantis notes that the film and its accompanying novel present the autochthonous ethnic Greeks of Anatolia (Asia Minor) as ‘Satan’s army’, as barbarous invaders.

“In The Water Diviner, Anastasios omits that Greeks (Hellenes), Armenians and (Christian) Assyrians are indigenous peoples of Anatolia, it omits that Armenians lived in the region where most of the action in the film and novel takes place; it depicts the autochthonous Hellenes of Anatolia so disparagingly that even the Turkish newspaper Zaman decries it, and much more,” the Greek-Australian professor says.

He also emphasized that “The Water Diviner paints autochthonous Anatolian Greeks as barbaric invaders, at one point being labelled ‘Satan’s army’ by one character.”

However, many surviving Anzac prisoners recorded how ethnic Greeks help them survive their ordeal at the hands of the Ottoman military (a Central Powers ally) – and in some cases, aided their escape, the article underlines.