Amanda Knox says Matt Damon’s Stillwater profits off her trauma

The movie Stillwater was inspired by Knox, but heavily fictionalized

amanda knox
(Image credit: Getty)

Amanda Knox, the American woman who spent four years in prison after being convicted in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher while studying abroad in Italy, said that the new movie Stillwater is cashing in on her “trauma.” 

Matt Damon stars in the movie about an Oklahoma-based construction worker whose daughter is charged and convicted with the murder of her ex-girlfriend while living in France. Damon’s character fights to get the ruling overturned. Director Tom McCarthy said he was inspired by Amanda Knox’s case, but that Stillwater is heavily fictionalized. 

Knox Tweeted that the move was "just the tabloid conspiracy guiltier version of me"

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When Knox was 20-years-old she studied abroad in Perugia. Prosecutors alleged that she and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito killed Kercher, who was from Leeds, during a sex game gone wrong. There was no DNA evidence linking them to the crime scene. The trial was extremely divisive between those in the U.S. and those in Italy and England, where Kercher was from. There have been numerous documentaries made about the trial, most recently Amanda Knox on Netflix. 

Knox was freed in 2011 after four years in prison, then convicted again in absentia in 2013, and acquitted again in 2015. The now 34-year-old wrote a book called Waiting to be Heard about her experience. 

“Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? 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,” Knox wrote on Twitter in reference to Stillwater. 

She also addressed critics who say the focus on her led people to forget Kercher. 

“This focus on me led many to complain that Meredith had been forgotten. But of course, who did they blame for that? Not the Italian authorities. Not the press. Me! Somehow it was my fault that the police and media focused on me at Meredith’s expense,” she wrote.

Knox said she had reached out to Damon and McCarthy with her critiques, and hoped they would hear what she had to say. 

Rebecca Holland is a travel and food writer based in Chicago. She has written for the Guardian, New York Times, Architectural Digest, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast and more. She is currently a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. When not working, you can find her eating her way through Chicago's neighborhoods, or in non-pandemic times, traveling around the world.