Gibney chronicles Salman Rushdie’s physical and emotional recovery after the 2022 attack, when a knife-wielding assailant stabbed him, 33 years after Iran issued a fatwa over The Satanic Verses and placed a price on his head. Using never-before-seen footage by his wife, poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, documenting his healing and return to daily life, as well as excerpts from Rushdie’s works, the film crafts a poetic dreamscape reflecting how Rushdie views writing as his own ‘knife’, a tool to fight back, reclaim his story, and respond to violence with imagination and art.