“The Bibi Files” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday evening. The documentary film features never-before-seen footage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara, his son Yair, and friends and associates as they’re interrogated by police.
The roughly two-hour film, still a work-in-progress, paints an unflattering portrait of Netanyahu, maintaining that his recent political moves are driven by personal interest, namely a desire to delay his corruption trials.
In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted in three separate cases for receiving bribes, fraud and breach of trust. The trial is ongoing and will likely take years to work its way through the courts.
“Many Israelis believed that Netanyahu’s attempts to delay his own trial are key to understanding recent events: his tacit approval of expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, his controversial handling of hostage negotiations, and military decisions that created a situation the U.N. Secretary-General called ‘a moral stain on us all,’” a movie blurb on the film festival website states.
The filmmakers also claim that the government’s judicial reform push last year was an effort by Netanyahu “to elude the consequences of the prosecution against him.”
“Our job in this film was to link these investigations and the corruption trial to everything that came after,” said the film’s director Alexis Bloom.
Generating greater-than-usual interest in the film, produced by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, is the interrogation footage—what Ynet termed “the great power of the film.”
The recordings, gleaned from thousands of hours of footage, were made between 2016 and 2018 when Israeli police questioned Netanyahu, his family and associates to determine whether to bring corruption charges against the prime minister.
The footage was leaked to Gibney in 2023, according to Variety magazine.
Political opponent
The film is banned in Israel due to a law against broadcasting unauthorized footage without court approval. “I hope the film will reach Israel in other ways,” said Gibney following the screening.
On Monday, Netanyahu made a last-ditch effort to block the film’s screening in a request to the Jerusalem District Court, though it was unclear how it could be enforced in Canada. The judge rejected the request.
Netanyahu also requested an injunction against Raviv Drucker, a Channel 13 reporter known for his antagonism towards the prime minister, who is a producer on the film and appears in it.
“Whoever publishes a visual or audio recording of an investigation, in whole or in part, without the permission of a court, shall be sentenced to one year in prison,” Netanyahu’s request said. “Drucker publicly declared himself a political opponent of Netanyahu and someone who wished to end his tenure as prime minister. He crossed red lines several times.”
According to Ynet‘s entertainment reporter, who viewed the Toronto screening, “One can understand why it disturbs the slumber of the prime minister’s associates. The picture emerging of his leadership, his considerations, his personal decision-making, and especially Netanyahu’s personality, is not flattering—to say the least.”
“These recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary,” Gibney told Variety. “They are powerful evidence of his venal and corrupt character and how that led us to where we are at right now.”
Gibney and Bloom have referred to the interrogation footage as “political bombs.”
‘”[The film] reveals something Shakespearean about the man in the sense that his slow corruption of character and his desperate need to stay in power led him to do terrible things that we’re now seeing evidence of,” Gibney said, according to Ynet.
Bloom, whose father is Jewish, said they wanted to get the film out even though it was a work-in-progress. “There’s a real sense of urgency here with this war continuing. It’s an old-fashioned truth-to-power film. And he’s in power,” said Bloom.