Documentary About Benjamin Netanyahu Will Screen at TIFF

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the topic of a new feature documentary, “The Bibi Files” produced by Oscar winner Alex Gibney and directed by Alexis Bloom. The two-hour docu, which will screen as work-in-progress at the Toronto Film Intl. Festival, features never-before-seen police interrogation footage of Netanyahu.

The recordings were made between 2016 and 2018 as part of a collection of evidence to determine if there should be an indictment against the Israeli Prime Minister on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

In 2023 the recordings were leaked to Gibney. They feature extensive interviews with Bibi, his wife Sara, his son Yair, the Prime Minister’s friends and associates as well as household employees.

“These recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary,” says Gibney. “They are powerful evidence of his venal and corrupt character and how that led us to where we are at right now.”

Thom Powers, lead TIFF documentary programmer calls “The Bibi Files” “a work of first rate documentary journalism. Alexis Bloom and Alex Gibney obtained revelatory footage that no one has seen before, then conducted in-depth interviews with wide array of figures including from the top ranks of the Israeli government. It exemplifies what makes long form documentary so vital to our culture for covering a story that’s been unfolding for many years. We’re living in a time when traditional journalistic outlets have suffered deep cutbacks, so independent companies like (Gibney’s) Jigsaw Productions are needed more than ever to step up.” 

Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, bribery and breach of trust in three cases filed in 2019.

While the recordings, which contain thousands of hours of interviews all in Hebrew, were made over eight years ago they have never been seen anywhere including Israel due to the country’s privacy law.

“Netanyahu’s character comes through very strongly in the recordings,” says Bloom. “I would say the difference between this film and a news item or something that you might see on PBS about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that this is a very human look at the people in the news headlines.”

Bloom, who previously collaborated with Gibney on “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes” and “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” explains that the docu uses the interrogations videos as “the way into” the story of Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader who has held office six times – more than any other prime minister in the country’s history.

“Our work in this film was to link these interrogations and the corruption trial to everything that comes afterwards,” says Bloom, who began working on the project prior to the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel.

“The Bibi Files” moves between Netanyahu’s present and past, and according to Gibney, “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.”

Bloom says that Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary in 2023 was one reason she came onto the film.

“(Netanyahu’s government) tries to overhaul the Supreme Courts and then waged the war in a way that would have never happened if he did not have such an extreme coalition,” she says.

Bloom, whose father is Jewish and strongly believes in Israel’s right to exist, has visited Israel numerous times throughout her childhood and adulthood. Both she and Gibney say that they set out to make a docu that doesn’t preach to any choir. Instead they consider the film, which features only Israelis, as a truth-to-power docu that focuses on human rights and not just Israeli-Palestinian rights.

“I’ve really tried to find common ground in this film – something that we can all agree on,” says Bloom. “Netanyahu overstaying his welcome is something that many Israelis would agree on and many Palestinians would agree on too. They might diverge when you go further than that in terms of what’s the solution to the Middle East crisis. They will certainly diverge on that, but actually I think that most people, except for the hardcore Bibist, would agree that Netanyahu has to go.”

Both Bloom and Gibney decided to bring the film, which is seeking distribution, to TIFF as a work-in-progress due to the ongoing war.

“There is a certain urgency in terms of reckoning with this material and reckoning with Netanyahu’s character at a time when we are being told, ‘Oh, these discussions are for another day because Netanyahu’s in the middle of a war,’” says Gibney. “We felt it was important, and frankly, our duty as world citizens to make our story known as soon as possible because people are dying every day.”

The streamers’ preferences for celebrity or true-crime nonfiction offerings over anything grappling with thorny, complicated issues or figures makes the Netanyahu docu a hard sell. But Bloom and Gibney have confidence that it will find a home.

“We are not trying to prescribe what should be done in terms of the conflict,” says Bloom. “This film is a portrait of the man (Netanyahu), and it’s a portrait of his family. I think that the film is more entertaining than a lot of political reporting on this, so, I hope somebody has the balls to pick it up.”

“The Bibi Files” will screen at TIFF on Sept. 9 and 10.