Salman Rushdie will be the subject of a new documentary on his life and attempted assassination in 2022.
Alex Gibney, the documentarian behind such films The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Taxi to the Dark Side, will direct Knife, inspired by Rushdie’s memoir of the same name which was published in April.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder recounts the Indian-born, British American novelist’s life and career, as well as the onstage stabbing in August 2022 that left him temporarily on a ventilator. The 76-year-old writer was speaking at an event in Chautauqua, New York, when a 24-year-old man from New Jersey rushed the stage and attacked him with a knife, stabbing him 15 times in the head, neck and chest. Rushdie lost vision in one eye and use of one hand as a result of the attack.
The film, first reported by Variety, will explore Rushdie’s recovery “in the broadest sense” using never-before-seen personal footage shot by his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths, according to a press release. The film will cover both Rushdie’s physical and spiritual healing, from a book that was “necessary” him to write – “a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art”, he said.
The book delayed the trial of Rushdie’s alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, who pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and has been held without bail since the attack.
Knife will draw from Griffiths’s footage – the couple had been married just 11 months before the attack – as well as interviews and excerpts from Rushdie’s work, including the fatwa calling for his death issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 for his book The Satanic Verses.
“It’s a delight and an honor to make this film about Salman Rushdie, an extraordinary novelist, a funny, poignant and resilient man, and one of the world’s most courageous defenders of freedom of speech,” Gibney said in a statement. “The opportunity to make this film about his recovery – in the broadest sense of the term – comes at a critical time. It gives me hope.”
Rushdie added in a statement: “I’m delighted we have Alex working with us on this film. We have long admired his brilliant work, from Taxi to the Dark Side and Going Clear to his recent portrait of Paul Simon. There couldn’t be a better person for the job.”
Gibney has already begun production on Knife, which is seeking a distributor. The Oscar-winning film-maker’s latest project, Musk, about the entrepreneur and world’s richest man Elon Musk, is forthcoming this year from HBO.
