‘Amanda Knox’ Directors See Hillary Clinton Parallel: Criticizing Women’s Behavior

Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn tell TheWrap how judging a woman’s behavior in public becomes polarizing

Amanda Knox directors

Amanda Knox has been a global sensation for almost ten years because of the murder charge of which she was repeatedly acquitted. But she’s rarely if ever been compared to Hillary Clinton.

Until now, that is.

The sensational Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox” screened on Wednesday at Los Angeles’ Landmark Theaters as part of TheWrap’s annual Awards Screening Series. Following the film — which covers the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher and the subsequent criminal trial that made suspect Knox a household name — filmmakers Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn sat for an audience Q&A.

One of the larger themes the directors wanted to explore was an examination of “acceptable” behavior from women in public spaces, they said.

McGinn was taken with the idea “that femininity itself could still be discussed in these kinds of terms, in 2007 through 2015 — the way we all kind of judge how women are supposed to behave.”

Knox was criticized during the investigation and trial for appearing cold and unmoved by the tragedy — but also for kissing her then-boyfriend and fellow suspect, Raffaele Sollecito, as police examined her and Kercher’s bloodied apartment.

“It’s something that feels especially modern to us in 2016, with all the discussion happening around the election,” McGinn said.

One audience member referenced the Wikileaks dump of Clinton campaign emails, and asked the directors if they were surprised to see emails suggesting the candidate was trying to cozy up to certain journalists — a quest for likability, as the person put it.

“The Wikileaks thing for me was a relativity ages-old idea of politicians cozying up to the media, but it comes to this question of — ‘At what point is the violation of privacy in the pubic interest, and what should stay private?’” McGinn said.

“That’s something we touch on in the film as well,” Blackhurst added. “When Amanda’s prison diaries leaked, really the only information that’s in that diary is how many people she slept with and what their names were. That gets plastered on front pages across the world. A lot of the recent Wikileaks dump has been very petty, personal, back-and-forth information that doesn’t answer any questions or further any discourse.”

The men said women are often placed under this sort of microscope in “patriarchal societies,” but audiences are just as complicit.

“The [press reaction to the the film] has examined the role we all have in taking stories like this and turning these people into characters for our entertainment. We use them up and spit them out, and move on to the next story,” Blackhurst said.

“Especially in the context of social media, people tend to hook on a flaw and try to tear people down for it,” he concluded.

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