Header photo: Camilla Storgaard Photography (Press Mary Velo)
She didn’t take very long to come up with a suggestion for our series Off The Tracks: “I can write about my recent passion [for] documentaries”, read the prompt reply from the Berlin-based techno producer Mary Velo, who has already released on such labels like Frozen Border, Semantica, and Gynoid Audio. While the native Canadian initially wanted to list her top ten documentaries, she quickly changed her mind in oder to finally write about her absolute favorite: the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox, directed by Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn. And this proved to be just right decision!
Trailer: Documentary Amanda Knox (Netflix, 2016)
I have always been interested in documentaries which inspire or shock me, and lately, I have been addicted to watching prison and crime documentaries. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I did apply to become a police officer years ago. It did not work out (thank god) but I still do have a detective instinct inside me and always analyzing situations which is why I chose to write about one of my favorite documentaries Amanda Knox. Some of you might have heard about Amanda Knox’s case back in 2007, Nov 2 as it made almost a decade’s worth of international coverage about the murder of her 21-year-old housemate Meredith Kercher. This film definitely puts me into detective mode as I have this complicated & twisted case presented to me and I am trying to figure out if Knox is guilty or not.
The case involved a lot of lies, false evidence, false confessions and made up stories by the media relating to sex. Since the prosecutor Giuliano Mignini (a Sherlock Holmes wannabe) alleged the murder was the result of a „sex game gone awry“ planned by Knox, Nico Pisa (a freelance journalist trying to make front page news with this case) was twisting stories around to come up with some outrageous news headlines he knew would make the front page. I got extremely annoyed with Pisa and a lot of people believe that his news stories were hurting Amanda during this case. Unfortunately, this was the only information people were getting from the outside and they were believing it. This is why both Mignini and Pisa looked like the real villains.
During the beginning of the movie, I looked up to prosecutor Giuliano Mignini as a hero and really felt like Amanda was guilty. I seemed to think so until he made his bold statement about the crime scene that he knew by the way the body was covered with a blanket, only a woman could have done this. He had all these weird theories against Knox and wanted to make sure she was found guilty. He also did find a knife which he believed was the murder weapon as it had both Meredith & Amanda’s DNA on it. All of Italy called Mignini a hero. However, Amanda said she cannot explain why both DNA were on the knife.
