NEW YORK – Amanda Knox stares into the camera, coolly contemplating how she became a figure of global fascination.

“I think people love monsters. And so when they get the chance, they want to see them. It’s people projecting their fears,” Knox says. “They want the reassurance that they know who the bad people are, and it’s not them. So maybe that’s what it is: We’re all afraid, and fear makes people crazy.”

Such is the provocative opening of “Amanda Knox,” a documentary premiering Friday on Netflix that gives the participants of one of the most sensational trials of the century a chance to tell their story, straightforwardly, directly to the camera. For a case that often seemed like a horror movie played out in the nightly news, “Amanda Knox” allows the drama’s main characters to step out from their media-crafted roles.

“We thought that a new way of adding a fresh perspective to the story was to look at it from the inside out and to get to the people at the center of the story and have them tell us what it was like to be embroiled in this whole story,” says Rod Blackhurst, who co-directed the film.

British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in 2007, in Peruga, Italy. Knox, Kercher’s roommate who was studying abroad, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of the murder. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, Sollecito to 25.

The convictions were overturned in 2011, but she and Sollecito were tried again in 2014, again found guilty, and finally exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015.


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