Knife Rushdie documentary opens in cinemas this week

One of the most talked-about documentaries of the year reaches cinemas this week. The Knife Rushdie documentary, directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, follows author Salman Rushdie through his long recovery after a man rushed the stage and stabbed him during a public lecture in upstate New York. The film premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and opens in general release across the UK and Ireland this weekend, alongside a limited rollout in the United States. Reviewers have praised its unflinching hospital footage and Rushdie's own dark humor in the face of violence.

A recovery filmed from the hospital bed

The Knife Rushdie documentary opens on August 12, 2022, the day Rushdie was about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution on the subject of the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. A 24-year-old man from New Jersey rushed the stage and, in 27 seconds, stabbed him 15 times in the neck, chest, eye, hand, and stomach, according to The Times. The attacker, Hadi Matar, was later convicted of attempted murder. Rushdie was airlifted to a Pennsylvania hospital, where he survived injuries that left him without the use of one eye.

The Knife Rushdie documentary draws on footage that began almost the moment Rushdie woke up. His wife, the poet and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, heard her husband say, "We need to document this," picked up a new camera, and filmed his year-long recovery in the hospital and at home. Gibney weaves her raw footage together with archival material and Rushdie's own voiceover narration, drawn in part from the author's 2024 memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. The director withholds the CCTV footage of the attack itself until late in the film. There is also a playful streak, according to The Times, which notes nods to Rushdie's love of cinema, including clips from the Beatles and Luis Bunuel's Un chien andalou, and the author's own joke, after losing the use of an eye, that all he needs now is a parrot on his shoulder.

Critics call it shocking and uplifting

Reviewers have responded strongly to the Knife Rushdie documentary. It holds a 96 percent approval rating from 23 critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a weighted score of 80 out of 100 from 13 critics on Metacritic. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "a vibrant testament to the intellectual life of its subject," while Kate Erbland of IndieWire gave it a B+, writing that Rushdie's calm, darkly humorous narration of his own attempted murder gives the film immediate impact. Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com awarded it three and a half out of four stars, and The Times, in a four-star review, described the film as both shocking and uplifting (The Times review). The Guardian praised the way the film connects the two time frames of Rushdie's life, before and after the attack.

The UK and Ireland release is handled by Altitude, which held one-night-only previews in more than 75 cinemas on September 30, each screening a broadcast of a Q&A with Rushdie, Gibney, and Griffiths recorded at the sold-out UK premiere at London's Barbican, the distributor said in a statement. The general theatrical release across the UK and Ireland began on October 2. The Knife Rushdie documentary is the second Gibney release of the season, arriving alongside Musk, his documentary about Elon Musk that screened at the Venice Film Festival, according to Variety. In the United States, the film opened at the IFC Center in New York on September 17 and expands to further limited engagements from October 3. It runs 107 minutes.

Gibney also gives the attack its longer history. Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses drew protests around the world and a 1989 fatwa from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for the author's assassination, accompanied by a $13 million bounty. Rushdie spent years in hiding before returning to public life. The Playlist, reviewing the Knife Rushdie documentary, noted that the film becomes an indictment not of belief itself but of absolutism, and that the attacker had inherited an old ideological hatred rather than nursing a personal grievance against the author. The result, the review argues, is an archive of survival produced by the very act that was meant to silence him.