The new movie Stillwater stars Matt Damon as an American father trying to exonerate his daughter, who’s been charged in Europe with the murder of another young woman. Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy told Vanity Fair his film was directly inspired by the story of Amanda Knox, an American college student imprisoned for eight years in Italy over a murder of which she was ultimately exonerated.
But Knox had no role in making the film. Instead, she says she found out about the movie the way a lot of people did: When the trailer came out. She told Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram that the Stillwater filmmakers told a fictionalized version of her story without any input from her or regard for the actual outcome of her case.
“The way that Stillwater has chosen to represent my story in their story is that the Amanda Knox character has special knowledge and was at the very least indirectly involved in the killing of the Meredith Kercher character, which is a myth,
”says Knox, who now co-hosts a podcast called Labyrinths. “It is the false narrative that was presented by the prosecution that has been debunked by evidence and yet is the ongoing myth that is an obstacle towards me reintegrating into society in a successful way and being taken seriously as a person.”
