NEW YORK – Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney, who in a decades-long career has tackled many a thorny issue, wasn't planning a film about Israel — until one day last year, when a stunning leak fell into his hands.
The leak turned out to be more like a deluge.
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Suddenly, Gibney, through a source who contacted him on the Signal messaging app, was being offered access to copious video recordings of police interviews with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara, his son Yair, and a host of associates and benefactors, all conducted as part of the sprawling corruption case against Netanyahu. It amounted to an astonishing 1,000-plus hours of tapes.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker didn’t speak Hebrew, but sensed this was something big. He turned to longtime Israeli investigative reporter Raviv Drucker, who did a deep dive into the material, Gibney says, and showed him that “we had something that was very explosive.” Then Gibney enlisted colleague Alexis Bloom, who had worked in Israel, to direct.
The result: “The Bibi Files,” a hard-hitting documentary that certainly has timing on its side — this week, as it was released on streaming, Netanyahu took the stand in the long-running case.
If the timing is fortuitous, the film faced other obstacles. For one thing, Gibney and Bloom had to raise funds without disclosing to potential backers what they had, given the secrecy involved. Many potential backers and distributors were also nervous about getting involved, especially once war broke out after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Then there was the biggest obstacle of all: The film cannot legally be shown in Israel, due to privacy laws regulating such proceedings.
That doesn’t mean Israelis aren’t seeing it, though. Many have managed to watch the film either by using a VPN to bypass streaming restrictions, or by watching leaked versions that made their way to social media. “The film is being pirated like wildfire in Israel,” says Bloom.
And it has made a predictable splash, just as Netanyahu becomes the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant. On Tuesday, he promised defiantly to knock down the “absurd” corruption allegations against him.
The longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. He is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars worth of cigars and champagne from a billionaire Hollywood producer in exchange for assistance with personal and business interests, and of promoting advantageous regulations for media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage.
In the leaked police videos, the 75-year-old leader sits at his desk in a surprisingly cramped office, a map of the region behind him. He expresses outrage at the proceedings, calls witnesses liars, and notes he has much weightier matters to attend to. At one point, asked about numbers of champagne bottles, he says he spends his time counting missiles threatening Israel, not bottles. Frequently, his answer is he doesn't remember.
“We have a number of people on the record telling us what a great memory he has,” says Gibney. “And almost every question that could be possibly incriminating, he says ‘I can’t recall.’"
Reviews in Israeli media for “The Bibi Files” have mostly been positive, while noting that Netanyahu is portrayed in a harsh light. Not surprisingly, public reaction reflects longstanding divisions over the polarizing leader. He and his supporters say he’s the subject of a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and biased justice system out to topple his rule.
“Netanyahu’s opponents will swear by the film and will only become more convinced that he is corrupt, dizzy with power and leading us to destruction,” Nir Wolf, TV critic for the Netanyahu-friendly Israel Hayom paper, wrote. “His supporters will want to embrace him more.”
Netanyahu has also noticed the film. In September, his lawyer asked the country’s attorney general to investigate Drucker, who is a co-producer with Gibney, accusing him of trying to influence the legal proceedings. No investigation has been launched. (In the film, Drucker notes that Netanyahu has previously sued him three times.)
The film, which intersperses police footage with commentary from former officials, Netanyahu associates, journalists and other analysts — including, frequently, Drucker — begins with the prime minister sitting for his first interview.
“With Netanyahu, nothing concentrates his mind more than the sound of the prison gate slammed behind his back,” comments Nimrod Novik, a former adviser to late Prime Minister Shimon Peres. One of Gibney and Bloom's key arguments will be that Netanyahu’s fear of potential prison time has influenced his policy decisions — from judicial reform to war.
Netanyahu appears indignant throughout. “You’re asking me delusional questions,” he tells his questioners. “This is preposterous and insane.”
In other footage, Arnon Milchan, the billionaire Hollywood mogul, Netanyahu friend and, more recently, prosecution witness, describes delivering fancy pink champagne on demand for Sara Netanyahu, sometimes toting a cooler himself, as part of an alleged gifts-for-favors scheme. Elsewhere, Sara Netanyahu sits for questioning herself. “How are you not ashamed of yourselves?” she sharply admonishes the interviewers. She tells them that outside Israel, her husband is justly received as a king.
Footage also includes interviews with Israeli-American billionaires Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. Sheldon Adelson expresses discomfort with the friendship — “I don’t think I’ll continue the relationship with them" — and dismay over the cost of Netanyahu's preferred Cuban cigars: $1,100 for a box of 10.
And a combative Yair Netanyahu, the couple’s 33-year old son, tells his questioners: “You’re investigating me because the Israeli police has become the Stasi secret police, wanting to overthrow the government.”
Director Bloom insists the film is not intended to preach to the choir — that it is made not for leftist opponents of Netanyahu, but for centrists.
“You know, a hardcore Bibi-ist is probably going to remain a hardcore Bibi-est,” the director says. “But there are a lot of centrists. … And it’s very much a portrait of one family. I don’t think it’s anti-Israel, in the slightest.”
The filmmakers say they paused after the Oct. 7 attack, trying to figure out how to approach it. As part of the historical context in the film, they include chilling scenes of the raid on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
“What was this going to mean?” Gibney says they wondered. “With a bit of time, it became clear that this tale that we started before Oct. 7 remained a story of corruption — the size of the corruption kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”
The film, which began streaming Wednesday on the new service Jolt.film, draws a direct connection between Netanyahu's legal problems and the war. Through various commentators, it argues that the criminal cases led the prime minister to launch a campaign to weaken the country’s judiciary, which in turn sparked mass protests and divisions that created an image of national weakness and led Hamas to attack. (Netanyahu rejects all such accusations).
Bloom says she hopes people will, having watched “The Bibi Files,” consider the idea that “term limits are a good idea." (Netanyahu has served a total of 17 years as prime minister.)
And she also hopes they will take away a simple concept. “It's OK to criticize the prime minister of Israel, and it’s not antisemitic and it’s not anti-Israel,” the director says. "He’s a political leader, like any other. “
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Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report.