SEATTLE — Amanda Knox is on a journey.
Eighteen years after she was wrongfully arrested and prosecuted for the murder of her roommate in Italy, Knox returned to confront the man who put her in prison.
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In a new Hulu documentary called “Mouth of the Wolf: Amanda Knox Returns to Italy,” we see intimate and painful details of that reckoning. The story comes not through the lens of the news or the pages of a tabloid, but through her words and her husband’s eyes.
“This is just footage of me in really, really difficult moments. And the only reason anyone has access to that is because it’s my husband,” Knox said.
Chris Robinson started filming conversations with Amanda in 2019.
“I wasn’t really sure what I was making at the beginning, but I saw how there were people out there that hated this woman that I had fallen in love with, and it was just baffling to me,” Robinson said. “There’s a lot of unflattering moments, frankly, of Amanda with bedhead and tears streaming down her face and like, having a panic attack. But also, triumphant moments. And she’s all of those things. And I wanted to reveal the person that I saw.”
The result is an intimate look at Amanda’s quest to come face to face with the man who fought so hard to convict her of murder, Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini.
We also see Amanda at home on Vashon Island, where she has built a refuge and a family—but hasn’t escaped her past.
“As soon as I became pregnant, I was stricken with the realization that my traumatic experience was still inside me alongside my daughter. And I felt like I was poisoned, and I needed to get the poison out of me. I had to be okay for her,” Knox said.
“I was just afraid of unintentionally passing on my grief to her. And so I really felt like it became really urgent for me to confront my past when I became pregnant with my daughter, so that I could be more future-focused and more her-focused as opposed to still grappling with the hurt that was inside me.”
Knox said she needed closure, and she didn’t feel like she could get that without going back.
The documentary takes us through multiple trips, and ultimately, that face-to-face meeting with Mignini.
The result is the most unlikely relationship.
“I certainly didn’t set out to forgive him,” Knox said of Mignini. “I set out to understand him. But the funny thing about truly understanding a person is that you come to care about them, warts and all. Is that forgiveness? Sort of. I’ve accepted him for who he is and believe that the harm he caused me was due to a lot of things, but not outright intentional malice. “
The two now keep in touch.
The documentary takes us through multiple trips, and ultimately Knox’s face-to-face meeting with Mignini. The result is the most unlikely relationship. (Hulu)
“He sends me a message almost daily,” Knox said. “And you know, it’s not like he’s pouring his heart out daily. Sometimes it’s just like, Oh, I saw this YouTube video, and I thought you might appreciate it. Like something like that.”
Robinson said documenting this evolution changed him. “The fact that she continued on that journey to not just going back to Italy, but to extending an olive branch to the man who threw her in prison, that was, I was watching that and feeling it affect me in real time,” he said.
“If Amanda can sit down with her prosecutor, I can go talk to my friend that I’ve been having some difficulty with, right? It changed the way I was interacting with my own problems in life. And I thought that that was so valuable because most of us haven’t been thrown in a prison cell across the world, but we’re all dealing with various traumas in our past. And I was witnessing Amanda demonstrate a way to confront those things that held firm to the truth and to accountability, but was also done with kindness and compassion. And I felt like people needed to see that.”
Robinson said the documentary also touches on a bigger story of prosecutorial accountability.
“How rare is it for someone to apologize? And that’s why I think it was important to also interview other exonerees and Innocence Project figures, to try and create some context around this story. Because Amanda is not the only person who’s been wrongly convicted,” Robinson said.
Knox and Robinson have matching tattoos that illustrate their personal steps to have a constructive conversation with someone you disagree with. It includes finding common ground and having compassion.
This is Amanda’s tattoo that illustrates her method to have a constructive conversation with someone you disagree with. (KOMO)
“I felt like I needed something from Italy, from him. And in the process of going through it, putting myself out there, I realized that I had something to give that I didn’t even know until I put myself in that position. I took the risk,” Knox said. “When you’ve been harmed, what do you do about it? And are you, do you wait for the world to do you justice, or do you make justice for yourself?”
“Mouth of the Wolf: Amanda Knox Returns to Italy” will be available to stream on Hulu, starting Monday, Jan. 26.
Knox and Robinson are hosting a screening that night at the Neptune in Seattle. It is free to attend, but a ticket is needed.
