Parents' Guide to

Amanda Knox

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Docu on sensationalized murder trial has graphic depictions.

Movie NR 2016 92 minutes
Amanda Knox Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

  • Amanda Knox Movie: Scene #1
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age 16+

Based on 1 parent review

doctora
doctora Parent of 5-year-old
June 12, 2022
age 16+

A tough but important documentary to watch.

A compelling documentary about a story I remember reading about on BBC News when it occurred. The film does a fine job of trying to reveal how everyone can think they're right and how that works to not be able to find "justice" for Meredith and incarcerate two young non-affluent people, and one young man who is still incarcerated. It is interesting how people are quick to draw their conclusions based on circumstantial evidence like, "she was behaving oddly" like there is a playbook when something egregiously traumatic happens that everyone knows to follow.
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What's the Story?

The documentary AMANDA KNOX follows the events of November of 2007, Meredith Kercher, an English exchange student living in Perugia, Italy, was found murdered in her apartment. Shortly afterward, her roommate, an American exchange student named Amanda Knox, and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were charged with the murder, based primarily on witnesses who perceived Knox's response to the murder as being inappropriate and insensitive. This led to their arrests, and a subsequent tabloid media frenzy that painted Knox as a manipulative femme fatale who goaded her boyfriend and another man into a "drug-fueled sex game" that led to the murder. Knox and Sollecito were charged, found guilty, served time in Italian prison, and over the course of several years, were later acquitted, charged again, then acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court. This documentary interviews the "lead characters" of this internationally covered trial -- Knox, Sollecito, the detective who investigated the case, the tabloid reporter who fueled and exploited any of the juiciest potential details to a public eager for salacious gossip -- and looks into what exactly happened, and the aftermath of these events.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1):
Kids say: Not yet rated

What distinguishes this movie from any other media coverage of Knox and those involved in her sensationalized murder trial is the attempt to dig deep and try to understand everyone involved. If anyone emerges as really and truly guilty, it's a media climate that favors sensationalized, exploitative, and just plain sleazy coverage of trials like these with readymade narratives involving attractive young women over devoting time to stories that demand nuance, substance, and importance to society as a whole. One of the saddest elements to Amanda Knox -- besides, of course, the gruesome murder of Meredith Kercher -- is the almost near-shameless complicity in which Tony Pisa, the tabloid reporter in the documentary who "broke" so many of the aspects to Amanda Knox's personal life (including obtaining her prison diary from an unnamed source) admits to exploiting the desires of so many media consumers for what amounts to little more than salacious gossip.

For those who closely followed the trial, it's hard to say whether or not this will change anyone's already made-up mind. However, what emerges from the documentary is that it's hard not to think of terms like "witch hunt," and it's Knox herself who makes the most compelling arguments for her innocence. But what especially makes this movie important is that while it certainly centers on the character assassinations, sloppy police work, and exploitative media coverage, it never lets the audience forget that the ultimate tragedy in all of this was that a young woman was brutally murdered.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the ways in which Amanda Knox tried to present all sides of the story after the fact while also presenting the events as they were covered by the media and investigated by the police. What would be the challenges in making a documentary like this?

  • How did this documentary humanize the "main players" in a sensationalized murder trial that oftentimes seemed more like a fictionalized crime drama than something in which real people were involved?

  • Why do you think the media spent so much time on this one murder while glossing over (if not ignoring) so many other murders that happen nearly every day in so many American cities?

Movie Details

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