US

Amanda Knox has claimed new film Stillwater sensationalises her life and rips off her story “without her consent” and “at the expense of her reputation”.

Stillwater stars Matt Damon as a father who flies to France to help his estranged daughter, Allison, played by Abigail Breslin.

She has been convicted and imprisoned for murdering her girlfriend in Marseille, in a case that has generated lurid headlines.

Knox is never named on screen, but in interviews the filmmakers have noted her sensational case was an initial jumping off point for the script.

In tweets and an essay on the site Medium, Knox called out various publications and director Tom McCarthy for using her name to promote the movie.

She wrote that his “fictionalised version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guiltier version of me”.

She added: “Does my name belong to me? Does my face? What about my life? My story? Why is my name used to refer to events I had no hand in?

More from Ents & Arts

“I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, and story without my consent.”

Knox was the subject of worldwide headlines after the 2007 murder in Perugia, Italy, of British student Meredith Kercher.

Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were placed under suspicion. Both were initially convicted, but after a series of different decisions Italy’s highest court threw out the convictions in 2015.

Rudy Guede was eventually convicted for the murder and sentenced to a 16-year prison sentence in 2008.

“By fictionalising away my innocence, my total lack of involvement, by erasing the role of the authorities in my wrongful conviction, McCarthy reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person,” Knox wrote.

At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month, where Stillwater was screened, McCarthy said Knox’s case served as an “initial inspiration point but not much beyond that. I just had a daughter then and I thought how it would be like”.

In a later interview with The Associated Press to promote Stillwater, McCarthy said he “didn’t want to kind of copy or mimic” Knox’s legal ordeal.

“It’s loosely inspired by that case, so I didn’t want to try and do a recreation of that. I want Allison to kind of be her own stand-alone character, but it was definitely great to have that for a reference,” he said.

Many reviews and feature stories about Stillwater have mentioned Knox as an inspiration for the plot. The film opens Friday.

The studio releasing the film, Focus Features, didn’t immediately respond to emails from the Associated Press on Friday.

Articles You May Like

Reddit begins testing AI-powered answers feature to win more users
GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house
Thames Water reveals spike in sewage spills
NatWest to hike chief’s pay as bank returns to full private ownership
Brave Bison swoops for T20 World Cup rights-holder Engage