By Ninder Kaur
Film director Asif Kapadia has spoken out to defend the Amy Winehouse documentary, saying he tried to make it as true to the late singer as possible.
The film has already attracted its fair share of controversy after the Winehouse family disassociated themselves from the work, with Amy’s father Mitch Winehouse threatening legal action over the way he has been portrayed.
However speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, Kapadia explained: ‘My angle was to make a film that was honest and truthful to Amy. There was a lot of tension, a lot of voices around her that made it difficult for her to deal with issues.
‘I think that is difficult for people to see because it’s turning the mirror around.’
He added that the story was ‘about her and her creative period, which was in her earlier years’.
Kapadia also said: ‘Sadly in the last five years of her life she didn’t make any music. She stopped living, almost, and was stuck in a roadblock when it came to creativity.’
Mitch Winehouse hit back about the film saying that it paints him as an absent father, as well as expressing anger over comments made by the singer’s former husband Blake Fielder-Civil – who has previously admitted introducing her to drugs.
‘Blake is saying in the film that the reason Amy was like that was because of me – not because he gave her crack and heroin and because he completely manipulated and coerced her into Class A drugs,’ he said.
‘I felt sick when I watched it for the first time. Amy would be furious.’
The film will be released in the UK on July 3.
