![]() Watch the trailer for Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy The film based on the life of US student Amanda Knox convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2009 will debut this February. Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been acquitted over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher for the final time. Follow latest updates. Why the Amanda Knox Netflix Documentary Is More Illuminating than a Decade! And yet I was some heinous whore: bestial, sex- obsessed, and unnatural. And if I’m guilty, it means I am the ultimate figure to fear. On the other hand, if I’m innocent, it means everyone’s vulnerable. And it’s everyone’s nightmare.”That extraordinary bit of monologue comes from Amanda Knox, a young, pretty American student who was studying in Perugia, Italy, and leading a carefree life abroad—until the morning in November 2. British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found in the house they shared, brutally slaughtered, her neck practically severed from her body. The beautiful Renaissance Italian town became, overnight—and in full view of a world panting for more and more details from the media—the venue of three major nightmares: the Kercher family’s, of course, and Amanda’s and Raffaele Sollecito’s, her Italian boyfriend, who were summarily arrested, convicted, and thrown in prison for four years for a murder neither committed, as I reported for Vanity Fair in 2. In January 2. 01. Rod Blackhurst and Brian Mc. Ginn, got Knox, now 2. A few months later, they received the cooperation of Sollecito, who had endured six months of solitary confinement after his conviction. Most astonishing of all: last July, Blackhurst and Mc. Ginn also managed to persuade Giuliano Mignini, the Italian prosecutor who brought the tabloid- ready case to trial, to appear in their documentary Amanda Knox, which will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival before being released by Netflix on September 3. It is this last get that offers viewers one of the most astonishing scenes, when he blandly reveals an especially imaginative scenario. Amanda’s motive for the murder of a girl she scarcely knew, says the prosecutor, was her “lack of morality,” her desire for “pleasure at any cost,” which led her to wield a large knife “that teases then plunges” into her roommate’s neck. Despite such lurid theorizing, Amanda Knox, unlike the bulk of nearly a decade’s worth of global press coverage around the case, refuses to editorialize, praise, or rebuke any of its protagonists, and that objective stance is precisely the strength of the film. As Mc. Ginn told me recently, “Everyone else who had reported the story had been on the outside. I wanted to look at it from the inside out.”This, however, was not an easy task. And there are no repercussions when you write something wrong. The results are illuminating. From Mignini, recalling his thoughts when evidence (which turned out to be tainted) supposedly revealed Sollecito’s DNA on the victim’s bra clasp, found only after 4. I remember colleagues complimenting me and saying, . Complete strangers walked up to me and congratulated me and asked to shake my hand. It gives me satisfaction . What more do you want? All that’s missing is the Pope!”As the interviews reveal, when Blackhurst and Mc. Ginn set out, the competing narratives around the case were still very much in play. After being exonerated of the murder in 2. Knox and Sollecito had their convictions reinstated in 2. Italy’s highest court in 2. That’s how we managed to film the day in Perugia in the fall of 2. Amanda and Raffaele were acquitted.”What the documentary makes clear is that despite the limited amount of solid information available to the media around the world at the beginning of the saga, almost everyone and anyone back then felt they were privy to the real and only truth about both the protagonists and the countries they came from. An old clip of Donald Trump—yes, him—actually shows him calling for a boycott of Italy after Knox’s conviction. As Blackhurst pointed out, in a rare moment of inserting his own opinion, “Who was he at the time to be calling for a boycott of Italy?” But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the film is its emphasis on the humanity of the characters it presents. Even Mignini pauses for a moment on- camera and reflects.“If they are innocent, I hope they can forget the suffering they endured,” says the prosecutor. Very doubtful. Full Screen. Photos: 1/8. See the Real Locations From Robert Durst’s Alleged Crimes The Benedict Canyon neighborhood where Susan Berman, a close friend of Durst’s, was found dead in 2. Berman was shot execution- style in the back of the head. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. The Galveston, Texas, rooming house where Durst shot dead and dismembered his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, in 2. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. The Galveston, Texas, neighborhood where Durst was living in 2. The real- estate heir was reportedly posing as a mute woman during his time in Texas to avoid attention for his wife’s disappearance. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. The Galveston County Courthouse where Durst was acquitted for the murder of Morris Black in 2. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. Jim Mc. Cormack, the brother of Durst’s first wife, Kathie, photographed in 2. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop. Susan Criss, the judge presiding over Durst’s 2. Photo: Photograph by Justin Bishop.
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