A new documentary, 'The Bibi Files,' from the creator of the Academy Award-winning American producer Alex Gibney, is promising to drop a political bombshell in Jerusalem. The two-hour film, which will premiere next week at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), reveals never-before-seen footage of police investigations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which were collected as part of the investigations against him on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. But under Israeli law, recordings of interrogations are prohibited from publication without the permission of the court. Since the film was created and screened overseas it is likely to be seen in every country except Israel, where its broadcast is a legal question.
The recordings, which were taken between 2016 and 2018 and revealed to Gibney only in 2023, feature Netanyahu himself, his wife Sara, his son Yair, friends and associates of the prime minister as well as the household workers in the prime minister's residence on Balfour Street.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trials are the focus of the new documentary 'The Bibi Files'
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
According to Gibney and director Alexis Bloom, the footage are "political bombs" which can shed new and surprising light on Netanyahu's character and the corruption attributed to him. They explain that the recordings, which contain thousands of hours of interviews - are all in Hebrew and were conducted over eight years ago, but have not yet been revealed, as mentioned, due to privacy protection laws in Israel.
Gibney, whom Esquire magazine previously called "the most important documentarian of our time", told Variety magazine that the film seeks to present Netanyahu's character in a way that has never been seen before.
The film reveals ""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," according to Gibney.
“Netanyahu’s character comes through very strongly in the recordings,” Bloom told Variety. “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.”
"Our job in this film was to link these investigations and the corruption trial to everything that came after," she said in an apparent reference to October 7. The film also deals with the judicial reform effort.
It is being presented at the film festival as a work in progress due to the war against Hamas in Gaza.
“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,” Bloom told Variety.
Gibney and Bloom previously worked together on the documentaries "Divide and Conquer: The story of Roger Ailes Story" and "We Steal Secrets: The story of WikiLeaks."
Gibney won an Oscar for the film he directed in 2007, "Taxi to the Dark Side," which dealt with the case of the death case of an Afghan taxi driver under torture after changes in the country following the American invasion after the September 11 attacks. He has also made films about the opioid crisis and has won Emmy, Grammy, Peabody and Writers Guild Awards. He has not spared Netanyahu criticism in the past and his tweet history includes support for "the deal of the century that will replace Netanyahu and his extreme far-right partners with the rest of the hostages. Everyone wins." He also shared claims that the IDF committed a "flagrant war crime" in relation to an investigation into its use of Palestinian civilians as human shields to inspect potentially trapped tunnels in Gaza.
Bloom, whose father is Jewish and who says she has visited Israel on several occassions, said that the goal for them now was to make a documentary that would not "try to convince the convinced," but a film that respects the truth and focuses on human rights, and not only on 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.”etanyahu should go."
The Bibi Files will premiere September 9th and 10th at the Toronto International Film Festival.