Amanda Knox, the 20 year-old American suspect in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, is starring in a film shot at the Perugia jail where she has been held since her arrest in November last year.
Knox is among 12 female prisoners who act in the 55-minute movie, entitled The Last City, which was funded by the Umbria regional government at a reported cost of between 10,000 and 15,000 euros.
''This is the first time we've made a film in the prison - until now we've only put on shows,'' said the movie's director, Claudio Carini, who works on the prison's reintegration programme.
''Amanda volunteered in September and we started filming immediately. She was diligent, disciplined, good. She worked hard, just like all the others,'' he said.
Knox and her co-stars play 12 prisoners who dream of escape and who go on an imaginary journey to seven different 'cities': those of cinema, work, music, loneliness, madness, dreams and prison, according to Carini.
Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Knox as saying that ''making this film has been a great experience. The story is full of poetry, touching, emotional''.
The film was due to be screened at a city centre cinema on Sunday as part of Perugia's Batik Independent Film Festival, but was withdrawn at the last minute on the request of Knox's lawyers.
It will now be shown at the end of January, after Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito begin their murder trial.
MAGNETIC ACTRESS.
''She's a magnetic actress'', Batik Director Alessandro Riccini Ricci, one of the few people to have seen the film, told Corriere della Sera.
Knox, who recites Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech in Italian and English, has ''a personality which stands out over the others, together with a strong stage presence''.
''Even if we hadn't known who she was we would certainly have noticed her because she's a good actress,'' Riccini Ricci said.
The film was shot over three months at the prison's theatre using minimalist scenery, while the prisoners appear without costumes or make-up.
Instead they pass a hat to each other when it is their turn to speak.
''For us making a film has a rehabilitative and reintegrative function,'' said the region's social policy chief Damiano Stufara.
''We don't want to single out Amanda. For us all the prisoners are equal''.
Stufara said the region had agreed to Knox's lawyer's request to delay the screening of the movie in view of the upcoming trial.
''We certainly don't want this film to bring to Perugia the type of publicity that arrived with the Kercher murder,'' he said.
People of Freedom party senator Laura Allegrini expressed ''astonishment and disappointment'' at the project's inclusion of Knox, who had to get special permission to participate as she is still awaiting trial.
Allegrini said the film would fuel celebrity-style media coverage of the American, whose 'angel-faced' looks have helped grab headlines, ''as if she were a star and not a young woman accused of a horrible crime''.
''In all of this, the victim and her family are put in second place''.
MURDER TRIAL BEGINS IN JANUARY.
Knox and Sollecito, 24, are due to begin trial on January 16 for their part in Kercher's murder.
The 21-year-old British exchange student was found semi-naked and with her throat slashed on November 2 last year in the house she shared with Knox and two other Italian women.
Last month a third defendant, 21-year-old Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years for sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher.
Guede had opted for a separate fast-track trial without a jury to avoid being tried alongside Knox and Sollecito, who his lawyers feared would try to pin the blame on Guede.
The prosecution claims Kercher was killed when all three suspects tried to force her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game''.
The suspects deny wrongdoing.
