Abramorama acquires North American rights to ‘Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,’ Alex Gibney docu about attack on prolific author

Abramorama has officially picked up the North American rights to the documentary Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, Deadline reported. This film, directed by Alex Gibney, chronicles the life and recovery of the celebrated writer following a brutal attack that occurred while he was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. You can expect the film to hit the big screen starting September 17 at the IFC Center in New York City, followed by a wider rollout across theaters in North America.

The documentary has already made its rounds at various festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, and the Guadalajara International Film Festival. It has also screened at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, the Doc10 Film Festival in Chicago, the Nantucket Film Festival, and most recently at Hamptons SummerDocs in New York. Given the gravity of the subject matter and Gibney’s track record, there is plenty of buzz surrounding its potential for Oscar consideration.

Alex Gibney won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side and has been behind acclaimed projects like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. For this project, he produces alongside Erin Edeiken and Sruthi Pinnamaneni, with executive producers including Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Wendy Schmidt, and Richard Perello.

Alex Gibney is no stranger to high-stakes documentary filmmaking

The film relies on a mix of sources, including Rushdie’s own 2024 bestselling memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. It also features never-before-seen footage captured by Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, in the wake of the stabbing. This footage provides a raw, personal look at his recovery, documenting the physical and spiritual hurdles he faced after losing an eye and suffering reduced use of one hand.

“Eliza’s footage captured not only Salman’s physical recovery, but a level of intimacy and vulnerability that revealed a much deeper story beneath the surface. Salman’s courage in sharing his experience with such honesty allowed us to explore something far beyond the violence itself,” Gibney said in a statement.

“On one level, Knife is a story of survival and recovery after a horrific attack. But the deeper journey, one that Salman speaks to so powerfully, is the movement from a place of active hate to a place of love. That transformation, and the complexity, courage, and humanity within it, is what drew me to this story and what I wanted to explore through the film.”

The context for this event is rooted in nearly 40 years of threats against the author, stemming from a fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini after the publication of The Satanic Verses. In August 2022, while appearing at the Chautauqua Institution to discuss the United States as a sanctuary for exiled writers, Rushdie was stabbed 15 times by an attacker who admitted he had never read the author’s work.

Despite the severity of the incident, those close to him highlight his enduring spirit. At Sundance, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, noted, “It’s been deeply moving and remains deeply moving to me to watch Salman survive and not just survive, but just really continue forward with courage, to write Knife so quickly after the attack, to write a collection of short stories. He’s a badass.”

The film also captures his characteristic sense of humor. “There’s a nice moment at the end of the credits where Salman’s being served a cake and he looks around and said, ‘Anybody got a knife?’” Gibney shared. “One of the great things about Salman as a person is he’s very funny, but also his writing is infused with humor… That was one of the things that we wanted to emphasize in the making of the film.”

Karol Martesko-Fenster, CEO of AB2 Media Group / Abramorama, and Damon G. Smith, SVP of Business Growth and Creative Strategy, praised the project, stating, “Alex Gibney’s Knife is one of the most vital documentaries we’ve encountered in years. It’s a portrait of an act of unimaginable violence answered not with fear, but with art, clarity, and defiance. Salman Rushdie’s story is a reminder of what’s at stake when free expression comes under attack.”