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Netflix to premiere Amanda Knox documentary alongside Leonardo DiCaprio's The Ivory Game at TIFF

The streaming service will also debut Into the Inferno and The White Helmets

Jess Denham
Wednesday 10 August 2016 15:45 BST
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Netflix's Amanda Knox documentary arrives on 30 September
Netflix's Amanda Knox documentary arrives on 30 September

Leonardo DiCaprio’s new documentary about the extinction threat facing African elephants is among the four non-fiction Netflix originals set to premiere at Toronto International Film Festival.

The Oscar-winning actor has executive produced The Ivory Game from acclaimed directors Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson, which “goes undercover into the dark and sinister underbelly of ivory trafficking” to reveal harrowing truths about the corrupt activity.

The festival, which runs from 8-18 September, will also debut Amanda Knox, about the notorious Meredith Kercher murder case. Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn’s documentary will delve behind the headlines to explore the “often fraught relationship between true crime tragedy, justice and entertainment” in a bid to discover whether Knox was a psychopathic killer or a naive student caught up in a nightmare abroad.

Netflix’s final two TIFF documentaries will be Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s Into the Inferno about mankind’s relationship with the world’s most mythical volcanoes and moving short The White Helmets set in Aleppo, Syria and Turkey as the violence intensifies in early 2016. The latter comes from the filmmakers behind DiCaprio’s mountain gorilla conservation documentary Virunga.

Netflix has already announced that Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th, about racial injustice and the US prison system, will become the first nonfiction film to open the New York Film Festival, also in September.

Further documentaries coming from the streaming service in 2016 include Tribeca Best Documentary Short winner Extremis, which explores the heartrending decisions faced in urgent end-of-life cases, and Sundance acquisitions Audrie & Daisy, about two teen assault cases tried in the social media age, and Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, about the titular fireworks artist.

Netflix achieved Oscars success with its documentaries last year when both What Happened, Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire were nominated for gongs after successful festival showings. Its first original documentary acquisition, The Square, was nominated in 2013.

The White Helmets hits Netflix first on 16 September, followed by Amanda Knox on 30 September, Into the Inferno on 28 October and The Ivory Game on 4 November.

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