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When a British girl, Meredith Kercher, was murdered in Italy – allegedly by an American girl, Amanda Knox – it was the biggest news story in 2007.
Amanda Knox spent four years in an Italian prison and now she is currently trying to build a new life. Knox was accused of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, a crime she says she did not commit.
A new Netflix documentary, “Amanda Knox,” explains what happened step by step, from when Knox went to Italy up until her life now.
In the documentary, Knox claims that she can no longer go back to the person she was before going to Italy; She was a regular college girl who thought of herself as being weird and not independent at all, which was her reason for studying abroad in Perugia, Italy.
The documentary features interviews with Amanda Knox, Knox's boyfriend at the time Raffaele Sollecito, the Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini and a journalist who covered the story, Nick Pisa.
They each explain their version of what happened in the eight years during which the trial had been going on. Pisa explains how the case served as an amazing story for the tabloids. He notes when Rudy Guede was accused of being the main murderer, no one really cared for it. All everyone wanted to hear about was Amanda Knox.
The prosecutor, Mignini, firmly believes that Knox did murder her roommate. Step by step, he describes how a female murderer would leave the scene of the crime, using examples from how Kercher was found. He believes his biggest mistake at the time was not measuring the temperature of the body right away. By knowing that, the police could have instantly found out if Knox and her boyfriend were really suspects or not.
The documentary was very graphic, but truly gives a sense of how everything happened at the time. It goes back and forth between interviews and videos from the actual crime scene and trial. It also made use of recorded conversations between Knox and the police, as well as recorded conversations with friends from when her phone was tapped.
The most powerful part of the documentary was when Knox and Sollecito were released from prison for not being guilty. The footage that showed how her family reacted, and how the public in Italy reacted, which gives a sense of the emotion going on at the time of the trial.
Overall, it is an extremely interesting documentary and it is definitely worth watching. The crime still remains unsolved. As Knox says at the beginning of the documentary, "There are those who believe in my innocence. And there are those who believe in my guilt. There's no in between."
lledomen@ramapo.edu
