After the success of Making a Murderer, Netflix is diving into another murder case that many believe was mishandled and put the wrong people behind bars for years.
The Seattle Times noted that in the Amanda Knox documentary filmmakers Brian McGinn and Rod Blackhurst go beyond the headlines and tell the story of Knox, who along with ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007.
“We only wanted to make the film if we could tell it from the inside out,” McGinn said.
Blackhurst echoed that and said, “People were so passionately caught up in their assessments of the headlines, trying to draw their own conclusions about what happened. We were wondering: Why were people so driven to talk about this this way? Why had it become this entertaining cycle of stories, and what had been lost in that evolution? Of course, the human side of it was not being talked about.”
The film, which took five years to complete and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, features interviews with Knox, Sollecito prosecutor Giuliani Magnini and Daily Mail journalist Nick Pisa, who admitted to taking some compromising photos from Knox's Myspace page to create more of a salacious story.
The documentary gives a look at how Knox's life has changed since she was convicted, acquitted, convicted again and finally exonerated by the Supreme Court of Italy in 2015. It also gives the facts about Kercher's brutal murder and includes some graphic footage of the crime scene. On Nov. 1, 2007, Knox's 21-year-old housemate was found in her bedroom with her throat slit, lying in a pool of blood and partially clothed. In 2008, Rudy Guede was found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher. Although he is currently serving a 16-year sentence for the crime, some still believe that Knox and Sollecito were somehow involved in the killing. But for as many people who believe they are guilty, there are as many who believe they are innocent. The filmmakers hope that after seeing the film you will be able to form your own opinion if you haven't already.
Amanda Knox will be available starting on Friday, Sept. 30.