Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie

synopsis

A knife. A deadly weapon. The victim and his assassin. 27 seconds. One situation, many perspectives. An ornate yet intimate account of the most serious attempt on the life of the provocative writer Salman Rushdie leads viewers into a seemingly tranquil debate in 2022. Through flashbacks, memories, traces and the victim’s artistic meditations on the attempted murder (on which Rushdie published a memoir in 2024), we explore the motivation, context and consequences of this horrific act. Rushdie’s wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, acts as guide and author, chronicling the weeks of convalescence and the painful return to the scene of the crime. She demonstrates that the only answer to hatred is boundless love.

 

“My body was dying, and it was taking me with it. Who or what did I think the ‘me’ was? The ‘self’ which was in the body, but was not the body. The ghost in the machine.” — Salman Rushdie, quote from the movie

biography

Alex Gibney (1953) is an American documentary filmmaker, film director and journalist. He graduated from Yale University and the UCLA Film School. His work focuses on contemporary controversial topics and figures such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Lance Armstrong and Hunter S. Thompson. Esquire magazine has described him as “the most important documentary filmmaker of our times.”

film details

director:	Alex Gibney
producer:	Alex Gibney, Erin Edeiken, Sruthi Pinnamaneni