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Amy Winehouse documentary: Mitch Winehouse threatens legal action against filmmakers for 'portraying him as absent father'

Mitch Winehouse is hoping to halt the film's release

Neela Debnath
Monday 27 April 2015 10:14 BST
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Amy Winehouse died at the age 27 of alcohol poisoning in July 2011.
Amy Winehouse died at the age 27 of alcohol poisoning in July 2011. (Getty Images)

The father of troubled singer Amy Winehouse is threatening to sue the makers of a documentary about his late daughter.

Mitch Winehouse has said that he films casts him a negative light as an absent father, “I felt sick when I watched it for the first time. Amy would be furious. This is not what she would have wanted,” he told The Sun.

He went on to say, “I am painted as being an absent father during her last years. It gives the impression the family weren’t there.”

After watching the first edit Mitch said that he is planning on taking legal action with plans to sue for defamation.

He also instructed lawyers to try to halt the film’s release; Amy is set to be released in UK from the 3 July.

“They had a pretty good idea of the film they wanted to make from the off and weren’t going to let anything, like the truth or Amy’s friends, get in the way,” he added.

But it is not just his portrayal in the documentary that has angered the singer’s father, in the documentary Amy’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil allegedly blames Mitch for star’s downward spiral.

Fielder-Civil has previously admitted that he introduced to the singer to hard drugs and was present the first time she took heroin.

“How they can allow him to make that claim about me is so hurtful and beyond belief,” Mitch said.

The film simply entitled Amy has been made by Senna Director Asif Kapadia and will be screened next month at the Cannes Film Festival.

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A spokesman for the film told The Sun: “We came on board with the full backing of the Winehouse family and we approached the project with total objectivity.

“We conducted in the region of 100 interviews with people that knew Amy.

“The story that the film tells is a reflection of our findings from these interviews.”


Amy Winehouse died at the age 27 of alcohol poisoning in July 2011.

She won five Grammy Awards for her second album Back to Black, which broke records at the time of her death to become the UK’s best-selling album of the 21st century.

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