Amanda Knox puts Matt Damon and ‘Stillwater’ on blast for dramatizing her wrongful conviction

Amanda Knox is not happy with Matt Damon, director Tom McCarthy, and the movie Stillwater for what she says amounts to using her life story without her consent and sensationally spinning it.

Taking to Twitter in a multi-part thread, she specifically called out the way the movie, and the media, continually use her name in a macabre way that in no way reflects the truth. She also noted that whenever she is written about (or in the case of Stillwater, dramatized), she is never consulted, and consent is never given.

“Does my name belong to me?” she Tweeted on Thursday. “My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER.”

She goes on to say that for-profit movies like Stillwater and for-profit media articles continually insinuate that she had a hand in the gruesome murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia Italy in 2007, even though she was acquitted and the real murderer, Rudy Guede, has already been identified. She laments that her name is used in place of Kercher’s, leaving the victim’s name and legacy largely to the shadows. She also excoriates the way that the film completely fails to acknowledge how the Italian police and justice system were incompetent and failed her (she was convicted twice before her acquittal by the Italian Supreme Court), yet they use her name and story as “inspiration.”

In her condemnation, she also included a recent Vanity Fair article that specifically articulated how Stillwater was “inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.”

“I want to pause right here on that phrase: ‘the Amanda Knox saga,’” she tweeted. “What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No.”

“It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede,” she continued.

“It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.”

She also called out Deadline and The New York Times for using similar language – in Deadline’s case, she says the writer neglected to include the fact that she was wrongfully convicted and acquitted on all charges in his piece, and instead only mentioned her original conviction.

She also tweeted that Stillwater may be fictionalized and merely based on her life, but when it takes liberties with her stories, she says that can only have real-life consequences for her and how the public perceives her.

"How do you think that impacts my reputation?” she asked, before detailing how she’s had stalkers at her place of employment, and fellow students have taken her picture while she was studying and trying to live as a private citizen.

“I continue to be accused of ‘knowing something I’m not revealing,’ of ‘having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife.’ So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalized version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guilter version of me,” she tweeted.

She calls out to director McCarthy, asking why he chose never to consult with her on the film, or why he never asked for her consent to use her story as inspiration for the movie, before inviting him to chat with her on her podcast, Labyrinths.

“I bet we could have a fascinating conversation about identity, and public perception, and who should get to exploit a name, face, and story that has entered the public imagination,” she says of the offer.

In her closing remarks, she tweets, “I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen ever again.”

Stillwater opened in cinemas Friday, and tells the story of an American man, played by Matt Damon, who endeavours to get his daughter, who has been imprisoned for murder in France, out of jail and clear her name.

At press time neither Matt Damon nor Tom McCarthy has responded to Knox’s critique.

BEFORE YOU GO: Matt Damon on 'Stillwater' and the return of the movie theatre

[video_embed id='2249290']BEFORE YOU GO: Matt Damon on 'Stillwater' and the return of the movie theatre[/video_embed]