More than 30 years after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, the author traveled to Chautauqua, New York, to speak in 2022. Rushdie was about to give a speech about artistic freedom when Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, rushed onto the stage and stabbed him multiple times in the face, neck and abdomen with a knife. The author survived the attack and wrote a memoir about the incident, “The Knife: Meditations After Attempted Murder,” which was published in 2024.
Before writing her book, Rushdie met with veteran documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney about making a film about the ordeal.
Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, shared with Gibney unseen footage taken in the days and weeks after the attack. The material was raw, unflinching, and deeply intimate. We also tracked Rushdie’s physical and mental recovery, including the challenges he continues to face, from blindness to reduced use of one hand.
“I think the idea of visually documenting recovery from this brutal attack was very interesting to Salman and Rachel,” says Gibney. “I think the idea of documenting this event and (showing) what the horror was like and how it literally left scars on Salman Rushdie’s body struck a chord with them.”
Gibney spent two years creating the document. The result is “The Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,” which will premiere at Sundance on Sunday.
Inspired by Rushdie’s 2024 memoir, “The Knife” blends reportage and fictional dialogue to explore the psychology of the assailant and explore the “why” behind the violence. At its heart, the film is a portrait document of Rushdie’s resilience and strength.
“The simple plot of the story is that Saruman is attacked, recovers from his injuries and recovers,” Gibney says. “But in the middle, Salman looks back on his life, and that’s the very structure of the film. It was a one-shot of the film, and it was more of a chronicle of his recovery. There wasn’t much about writing in there, so we said, ‘No, that’s not true. He’s a writer and an artist. We needed to show in a fundamental way how he thinks about his art as a means of recovery.’
Variety interviewed Gibney ahead of the Sundance world premiere of The Knife.
Animation, blurred recreations, and ultimately video footage are used to illustrate the violence inflicted on Rushdie in August 2022. Why did you decide to wait and show the video footage at the end of the movie instead of at the beginning?
It was a bit natural, but part of it had to do with there being no footage of the actual attack at the start. We then received it from the district attorney as part of the legal process. That said, I really felt like this whole movie was about recovery. And part of recovery is mental recovery. It’s not just about recovering your physical strength. How do we recognize such attacks? Memory is a tricky thing. Such memories resulting from some types of PTSD are troubling. The idea was to create a certain impression. I intentionally shot a photo that gives an impressive impression of the attack. It felt real, but it wasn’t a record. The idea is that Saruman can overcome the attack over time, examine his memories, and then go back to the scene of the crime, literally stand where he was attacked, reconstruct it as a way to process what really happened, and move forward.
Hadi Matar does not appear in the film. Have you contacted him for an interview?
I did that. I tried to talk to him but he wasn’t interested. But I definitely would have liked to have talked to him.
Do you think audiences would be surprised to learn that Hadi Matar has never even read The Satanic Verses?
He was not yet born when the fatwa occurred. He was just living in New Jersey. He became somewhat radicalized by videos he was watching online. He chose to kill Saruman to express his purpose and mission, even though he had never read The Satanic Verses. Because I think most of the people who are against The Devil Verses have never read The Devil Verses. (The book) became this useful foil. “You are attacking us. You are violating our identity and you must die.” This is a powerful comment on the moment we live in, where people can become radicalized and see people as just other people because they believe that you are somehow insulting their religion, culture, or identity, which gives you license to assault or kill someone.
We live in turbulent times. People are exposed to news about violence every day. Did that make it difficult to find a distributor for this film, or was it your intention to make it independently?
Due to various circumstances, I decided to produce it myself. I hope that a distribution company will be interested. Because even though it obviously has a lot of violence in it, it’s really about recovery. And while we see reports of these attacks, sometimes the moment of the attack is shared online, little is said about what happened after the attack. The pain and suffering that the victim’s family endures, or the pain and suffering that the victim herself endures if she survives. I hope that investing in the idea of recovery takes[doctors]to a different kind of place. Salman says something in the film to the effect that I wanted to go from an act of hate to a place of love.
The document market is unpredictable, but Salman Rushdie is a celebrity. As we all know, streamers love celebrity content. Do you think the movie will sell?
He’s a celebrity and a world-famous author, and rightly so. This is a real event that got a lot of attention. In some ways, this is also a true crime story. So this is a true crime story with celebrity elements.
