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Damon film entrenches ‘false narrative’ – Knox

Exoneree Amanda Knox has criticised the new Matt Damon film Stillwater, which opened in Ireland at the weekend.

The Stillwater plot is a fictionalised account, loosely based on Knox’s wrongful conviction for the murder of her British room-mate Meredith Kercher in Italy.

Knox was later acquitted of any involvement in the murder, after spending four years in prison.

Plot device

Knox says the film “reinforces the image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person", and that the script treats her as a plot device, rather than as a person.

Award-winning writer Tom McCarthy, who previously directed Spotlight, shifted the action to the gritty city of Marseilles, with Damon in the lead as an Oklahoma oil-rig worker fighting to prove his daughter’s innocence.

Knox wrote on Twitter that she wanted to “start a conversation” about the ethics of storytelling.

She said that she had not been consulted about the dramatisation, which she said derived from a “false narrative” around her case.

“I understand that fiction always borrows from reality, but there are consequences to which stories we tell and how we tell them,” she said.

Innocent person

However, Knox refrained from criticism of Matt Damon or Tom McCarthy, and said that they were not intentionally trying to exploit an innocent person.

"If anything, I think they had good intentions but they overlooked something. Why they overlooked my humanity in this case is an interesting question,” she said.

Knox said that a false story could become entrenched, and develop its own reality, “because a lot of people think it’s the truth without it being based on any evidence”.

Stillwater is now playing in cinemas nationwide.