Coming to theatres and to Netflix today, Friday, September 30: AMANDA KNOX
Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn’s re-examination of a sensationalized murder case made its debut at Toronto earlier this month. It now opens theatrically and exclusively on Netflix, and has just been announced as part of DOC NYC’s Short List.
The 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student living in Perugia, Italy, set off a worldwide media frenzy that made Amanda Knox, her unassuming roommate, infamous. Pegged as the primary suspects, Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were painted in the mainstream media as sexually depraved psychopaths, and eventually convicted twice by Italian courts before finally being acquitted. In their absorbing, well-constructed revisitation of Knox’s story, Blackhurst and McGinn gain the cooperation not only of Knox and Sollecito, but also, pivotally, Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini and Daily Mail tabloid journalist Nick Pisa, whose unfounded, salacious theories pathologizing and demonizing female sexual experimentation set in motion what followed. This inside perspective should prove illuminating – and disturbing – both for those who followed the case through the media’s wild speculation and for viewers who have no previously familiarity with Knox.
what (not) to doc 