She’s the name that was on the cover of every newspaper, magazine, tabloid, or news headline in late 2007/early 2008.
Amanda Knox.
The then 20-year-old Seattle college student was infamously found guilty in Italian court for the November 1st murder and rape of her roommate Meredith Kercher. She spent over 4 years in Italian prison before being retried and found not guilty in 2011, only to subsequently be tried for a third time in 2014 before obtaining a final verdict of not guilty.
Knox was subject to heavy media scrutiny from the Italian press over everything from her looks to her sex life, being painted as a drug and sex-crazed monster. Her story has been the centerpiece for several documentaries, books, an exclusive Diane Sawyer interview, a self-penned memoir, and even a Lifetime movie starring Hayden Panettiere.
A year after being exonerated by Italy’s highest court, a new documentary simply titled “Amanda Knox” is going to change everything you thought you knew about Kercher’s murder, the handling by the Italian police and media, and the Seattle girl who said she’s spent years desperately waiting to be heard.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NueLjUNB-GM%5D
Documentary filmmakers Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn began working on the project (which goes to Netflix on September 30th) in 2011. The deeper the two dove into the case, the more mishandling they found. From Knox’s false confession to the media’s obsession with her, “Amanda Knox” shows exactly what can happen when a prosecutor immediately decides someone is guilty, and tells sides to the 9 year-old story that have never before been heard.
While Knox had done TV interviews and even written her book, Blackhurst and McGinn still felt she wasn’t telling everything. They felt the same about her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito who was also charged and acquitted for the same crime, as well as Italian detective Giuliano Mignini, the lead investigator on the case.
“All of them felt this narrative the media put out there was not representative of who they were and we wanted to understand from a human point of view what it would feel like to have that applied to you and what it felt like to be caught up in these events and circumstances,” Blackhurst said to Business Insider.
Though both filmmakers met Knox after her initial acquittal in 2011, it wasn’t until 2 years later in 2013 that she decided (on her own) that she was ready to talk and be a part of their project. She first shot for the documentary in 2014, and once she had signed on Sollecito, Mignini, and journalists who released stories during those infamous years joined as well.
In “Amanda Knox” there are never before heard audio recordings of Knox speaking to her mother while in prison, her side of the story about the infamous kissing video, more sides to the interviews given by Knox and Sollecito during the trials, as well as admissions of falsifying stories for the press by journalists.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r8LG_lCbac%5D
Whether you suspect her or believe her, it’s sure to change absolutely everything you thought you knew about the murder of Meredith Kercher, and Amanda Knox as a whole.