Amy (2015) on Netflix

R20152h 8mBiography Documentary Music

Amy Winehouse is fourteen, singing at a friend's birthday party in Southgate, London. Home movies and interviews with the people around her trace her teenage years and her rise as a singer.

Netflix3.9/5
IMDb7.8/1058,235 votes
Rotten Tomatoes95%

Trailer

Watch the trailer on YouTube

Plot summary

Assembled from more than a hundred interviews with the people who knew her, along with home movies, concert tapes and recordings she never released, the documentary tells the story of Amy Winehouse largely through her own voice. It opens with a 1998 tape of a fourteen-year-old Winehouse singing at a birthday party in Southgate, London, then moves through her childhood, her early influences and the songwriting that led to her first album, Frank. Winehouse speaks about fame, love, depression and her family. Also included are a cab ride with her friend Tyler James, a session with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra when she was sixteen, and her audition for Island Records.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Amy (2015)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

The film features scenes of Jelena Karleuša's 2013 Viva La Diva concert at Ušće Park erroneously presented as Winehouse's last concert at the Belgrade Fortress. Karleuša announced lawsuits against the filmmakers before giving up on them out of respect for Winehouse.
The singer's father, Mitch, appeared on Loose Women to defend his place against the film and announced that he and Winehouse's former boyfriend, Reg Traviss, were making an alternative film, entitled A Letter To Amy, to "correct all the wrongs and omissions" that were in Kapadia's film.
Feeling he had been portrayed as the villain, Mitch threatened legal action until limited changes were made to the film. He has still publicly condemned the final cut, claiming that Kapadia had an agenda to make him the anti-hero from the start.
Kapadia conducted more than 100 interviews with Winehouse's friends and family that combine to provide a narrative around the star's life, and the film is billed as "the singer in her own words."