Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Viewer Advice: Contains strong impact themes.
A religious zealot stabbed him 15 times. But the outspoken novelist survived – and, as this documentary shows, retained his belief that creative freedom is the sharpest weapon.
In 1989, an Iranian fatwa called for author Salman Rushdie’s death over his theologically provocative novel The Satanic Verses. Booksellers were firebombed and international publishers and translators attacked, even killed. Rushdie went into hiding … but his eventual assailant hadn’t yet been born. In 2022, with more than three decades having passed and the danger seemingly over, the 75-year-old author was speaking on exiled artists’ safety in a relaxed, informal event in upstate New York when a young Shia extremist invaded the stage and stabbed him repeatedly. Despite the horrendous, life-changing injuries he endured, Rushdie refused to become a tragic symbol of ideological violence. Now, doubling down on his commitment to free expression, he documents his own survival.
Acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney (Zero Days, MIFF 2016) has profiled plenty of creative mavericks, political dissidents and repressive institutions. Here, he allows his subject’s clever, poetic voice to lead an unexpectedly meditative and allusive film that offers deep archival context for the home-video footage of the attack’s aftermath and the arduous recovery that followed, captured with unflinching love by the author’s poet wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Physically weakened and spiritually fragile, Rushdie nonetheless takes back his narrative, showing that resistance against authoritarian censorship is sharpened by wit, imagination and a defiantly imperfect humanity.
“Stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit … We need art like this documentary that reminds us that resistance is not just possible, but necessary.” – The Wrap
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