Three Thousand Years of Longing is a fantasy romantic drama film directed and produced by George Miller. Byatt and stars Idris Elba as a djinn who is unleashed from a bottle by a professor Tilda Swinton and tells her stories from his thousands of years-long existence.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, Alithea Binnie is a British scholar who occasionally suffers from hallucinations of demonic beings. During a trip to Istanbul , Alithea purchases an antique bottle and unleashes the Djinn trapped within it. The Djinn offers to grant Alithea three wishes, so long as each one is truly her heart's desire, but Alithea argues that wishing is a mistake, accusing the Djinn of being a trickster.
In response, the Djinn proceeds to tell her three tales of his past and how he ended up trapped in the bottle. The Djinn tells the story of the Queen of Sheba , his cousin and lover, being wooed by King Solomon , who imprisons the Djinn in a bottle which is cast into the Red Sea by a bird.
The Djinn wanders the palace for over years, invisible due to the concealment of the bottle. He almost captures the attention of Murad IV , but the latter goes to war and becomes a vicious and ruthless ruler, later dying from alcoholism.
His brother Ibrahim becomes the new sultan and develops a fetish for obese concubines. His favorite among them, Sugar Lump, uncovers the bottle, whereupon the Djinn appears to her and desperately begs her to make a wish.
