Alex Gibney's documentary 'Knife' explores Salman Rushdie's recovery from a 2022 stabbing attack, framing his survival and the defense of free speech through the lens of his marriage. The film, featuring intimate hospital footage shot by Rushdie's wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25. It draws from Rushdie's 2024 memoir of the same name, highlighting personal resilience amid ongoing threats.
In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York by a young man who had not read more than three pages of his work. The assailant, who was not alive when Rushdie's controversial 1989 novel 'The Satanic Verses' prompted a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, is now serving a multi-decade prison sentence. Rushdie, who lost sight in one eye, spent days in intensive care, connected to a ventilator, as captured in raw video diary footage filmed by his wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
Griffiths recalled arriving at the hospital: “It was freezing, and there was a huge blue ventilator. I thought, ‘People like this don’t get up out of the bed.’” Rushdie reflected, “We really didn’t know if we’d come out of it.” The couple, married in September 2021 after meeting a few years earlier, credits their relationship with his survival. Rushdie, previously married four times including to Padma Lakshmi, said of Griffiths, “And I wouldn’t be here if not for her.”
The fatwa forced Rushdie into hiding for a decade, moving between 15 locations in 20 days at one point, under protection from British intelligence. By around 2000, he resettled in New York and resumed a public life, appearing at events like house parties and the set of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' Yet the 2022 attack revived old fears, which Rushdie described as “something out of the past, like a time traveler.”
Directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, 'Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie' incorporates new attack footage and the couple's return to Chautauqua, where Rushdie stood on the stage saying, “I’m standing up in the place where I fell down.” The film reframes the ordeal as a love story rather than true crime. Rushdie, author of 15 novels including the Booker Prize-winning 'Midnight’s Children,' downplays his symbolic status: “I think of myself as a private person.” He advises writers facing threats, “Just do it. Fuck ‘em. Do it,” warning against self-censorship.
Rushdie sees ideology, not just Islamism, as a growing motivator for violence, noting, “There’s stuff closer to home.” At 78, he remains defiant, planning trips to Sundance despite heightened security.