After facing a failed attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu's government to block their world premiere screening, the filmmakers behind the anti-Netanyahu documentary The Bibi Files followed up on Monday night by debuting their work at the Toronto International Film Festival with a mix of grim determination and dizzying triumph.
Alexis Bloom’s film, which builds its case against Israel’s longtime prime minister on previously unreleased interrogation tapes, at times felt like a rallying cry for the pro-Israel crowd, often opposed to Netanyahu.
“You have to find a way to take this film and throw it over Israel,” one Israeli attendee said in the audience after the screening, although judging by the growing crowds of protesters on the streets of Tel Aviv following the deaths of six Israeli hostages, the message may have already been received.
The Bibi Files It was produced by Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, who said he and Bloom insisted the work be shown in Toronto in light of the ongoing war and the tragedies it brought on all sides.
“People die every day and we wanted to make a statement with this film,” Gibney told the audience after the screening.
Bloom, who is still shaping and adding material to the documentary, said that while his work took on a greater urgency in light of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he actually began to make it during the protests over Israel’s judicial reform that began in early 2023. “You can see this pattern going on all over the world, this democratic regression,” he said of the event that triggered the protests. Bloom has previously explored these themes with his 2018 film about Roger Ailes Divide and conquer and Gibney's Wikileaks film We steal secretsproduced by her.
The festival’s chief documentary programmer, Thom Powers, programmed Netanyahu’s film just last week, believing it had something important to say about the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
As the credits rolled and the audience stood to applaud, about a dozen people held signs calling for a ceasefire and a hostage deal. Outside on the city’s King Street, before the screening, protesters led chants in Hebrew calling for new parliamentary elections, a ceasefire and a hostage deal.
The film does not yet have any distribution deals, but Gibney hopes that festival screenings will bear fruit.
Bibi Files emerged after a source contacted Gibney with the secret interrogation tapes last year. The recordings have never been seen in Israel (though some of their contents were leaked to text-based journalists) and likely never will be, at least officially, given a privacy law that would put the source in legal jeopardy.
While the privacy law ostensibly applies only to Israel, Netanyahu’s lawyers asked the judge in his corruption trial to block the Toronto screening, arguing that the film was still bound by the statute internationally. The judge, Oded Shaham, denied the motion to block the film immediately, allowing Monday’s screening and a second Tuesday to proceed, though he asked for a response from the principals by Wednesday.
The Bibi Files uses a mix of talking history and in-room truth to paint a picture of a leader who seized power for corrupt and self-interested reasons (the charges involve about $250,000 in gifts received in exchange for political favors) to the detriment of his country. While it delves a bit into Netanyahu's policies on the Gaza war, it focuses mostly on his corruption trial, where charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust were handed down nearly five years ago while the trial continues.
The contours of Netanyahu’s corruption allegations, his wife Sara’s influence, and his coalition with far-right politicians will be familiar to those who follow Israeli politics. But watching the most powerful man in the country’s modern history spar with police investigators in his office, where he is sometimes playful, sometimes indignant, and often defiant, could paint a particularly grim portrait.
The film also features candid looks at a who’s who of modern Israeli figures, as everyone from Hollywood producer and longtime Netanyahu ally Arnon Milchan to current Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid (once finance minister under Netanyahu) can be seen talking about what they knew about the alleged corruption in unusually candid interrogation room settings. The unwitting co-starring roles of Sara Netanyahu (angrier and more outspoken than her husband) and son Yair (a right-wing influencer who calls police investigators “the Stasi”) complete the picture.
Israeli investigative journalist and notorious Netanyahu antagonist Raviv Drucker is the film’s main spokesperson and de facto narrator (and producer). The film also benefits from a 19-year-old Israeli woman from Kibbutz Be’eri who offers a bitingly anti-Netanyahu grassroots view.
On Monday, a member of the public said that Netanyahu had not been found guilty and warned against rushing to judgment without a conviction.
While The Bibi Files in its current form it falls short of last week’s protests, stopping short of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this summer, but its release could still fuel growing demands from a large majority of Israelis who want a ceasefire and a hostage deal from Netanyahu, as well as a change of government. An Israel Channel 12 poll last week found that more than two-thirds of Israelis believed Netanyahu should not run in the upcoming elections.
As with all documentaries, however, the question is whether the film will capitalize on this momentum or simply reinforce previously held views.
Gibney, at least, believes it could bring new clarity to international audiences.
“For a lot of Americans, the war goes on and on and on. And a lot of people are like, 'Why does it go on?'” he told the TIFF audience. “And I think one of the reasons we've made this film is to explain a lot of the events that we're seeing now through the corruption, the moral corruption, of this one individual.”