Actor Matt Damon and director Tom McCarthy collaborated on the film Stillwater, inspired by the legal battle of Amanda Knox who was imprisoned in Italy for four years for the murder of a British student. A murder for which Knox was acquitted. But Knox finds it absolutely impossible for her life to be made into a movie.
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McCarthy previously indicated that his latest film is inspired by the story of Knox. But according to Knox, the filmmakers used her story without her permission “at the expense of her reputation”. The 34-year-old and her ex-boyfriend were convicted of the 2007 murder of Knox’s roommate Meredith Kercher but both were acquitted in 2015.
Stillwater is about a man who travels to France where his daughter is imprisoned for the murder of her lover. McCarty previously gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which he explained that he had only used parts of the case, including the fact that a woman goes abroad to study, but that most of it is fiction. He said he wanted to omit the story of Knox earlier. “But this story, my story, is not about a woman who goes abroad and is involved in some sensational crime,” Knox writes on her blog. “This is about a woman who was not involved in such a crime and yet was wrongfully convicted. If you want to leave the Amanda Knox story behind and fictionalize everything around it, why are you using my name to promote it?” she wonders. According to Knox, McCarthy would reinforce the image of her as a guilty and unreliable person with his film.
According to Knox, neither Damon nor McCarthy would have contacted her during the shooting of the film.
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