New documentary reveals inside story of Salman Rushdie's survival after knife attack

A new documentary, "Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie," offers an unflinching look at author Salman Rushdie's recovery following the near-fatal stabbing he suffered in August 2022. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, the film draws on a video diary shot by Rushdie's wife, poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Griffiths learned of the attack via a phone call from a friend while Rushdie was travelling to a speaking engagement in Chautauqua, New York. He was stabbed multiple times and fought for his life. Within days of flying to his hospital bedside, Griffiths began documenting his treatment and recovery, an effort that started modestly but grew into a full video record.

Linking past and present

The film weaves this footage together with archive material from the years following 1989, when Iran's then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's execution over alleged blasphemy in his novel "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie subsequently spent nine years living in hiding under armed guard. The archive footage documents violence tied to the fatwa, including the firebombing of the Riverdale Press office in the US, riots in Pakistan that killed six people, the killing of a translator in Japan, and the stabbing of another translator in Italy.

Both Rushdie and Griffiths have already published memoirs about their experiences — Rushdie's "Knife" in 2024 and Griffiths' "The Flower Bearers" earlier this year. Rushdie lost sight in one eye during the 2022 attack, and the motives of his attacker, referred to only as "A" in both the book and film, remain unclear; Gibney was unable to secure a jailhouse interview with him.

The couple had been together five years before the attack, and Griffiths is Rushdie's fifth wife. Filmmakers describe the project as both a story of enduring love and one of healing after severe trauma.