‘Bibi Files’ Canada premiere puts PM interrogation footage on screen for first time
Israelis clamor for way to watch film containing unauthorized footage of PM and family being grilled over graft suspicions
A film containing never-before-seen footage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being interrogated by police over graft suspicions premiered in Toronto Monday, though the filmmakers behind the documentary said the work remains unfinished and might never be able to be lawfully shown in Israel due to outstanding legal issues.
The Toronto International Film Festival screening of “The Bibi Files,” by director Alexis Bloom and producer Alex Gibney, went ahead after an Israeli court turned down a request Monday to place an injunction on distribution of the film in Canada, though Israeli law prohibits the use of the unauthorized video.
“That footage can’t be shown [in Israel],” Gibney said on stage following the screening. “It’s a particular law in Israel, it doesn’t affect the rest of the world.”
Relying on interviews with former high-ranking Israeli officials, including convicted former prime minister Ehud Olmert, a survivor of the October 7 massacre in Kibbutz Beeri and others, the film aims to paint a picture of Netanyahu as a leader facing multiple criminal convictions, including for bribery, and how his actions since being indicted have affected his decision-making, including around the Hamas attack nearly a year ago.
The film’s inclusion of interrogation footage has sparked intense interest in Israel, with thousands of people joining online groups that claimed to offer a way to watch the movie covertly. A number of Israeli journalists were among the sold-out crowd at the Lightbox theater in Toronto.
Gibney said he hoped the film would eventually reach Israel in some form, the Ynet news site reported.
According to the producer, at least some of the material discussed in the leaked footage has previously found its way into the Israeli press.
The recordings of the premier being questioned by police between 2016 and 2018 were leaked to Gibney last year, according to Variety magazine, and consist of thousands of hours of interviews. The film also features investigators speaking to Netanyahu’s wife Sara and son Yair, along with friends, associates and household staff.
The movie is considered a work in progress, according to Bloom, who said legal problems had also forced the production to use an actor to portray one of the people in the film.
“There’s a lot of legal issues involved in making a film like this, and there are legal issues that we can’t specify here involving the person who had to be portrayed by an actor,” she said.
However, she added that she was still hoping to remove the actor and use the actual person.
Earlier Monday, the Jerusalem District Court rejected a request by Netanyahu to block the screening. The premier’s lawyers had sought an injunction against Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker, one of the film’s producers, for publishing footage from a police interrogation without permission from the court — a crime that carries up to a year in prison.
“Drucker has for years made cynical, instrumental use” of Netanyahu’s corruption interrogation to hurt him politically, the complaint alleged, describing the journalist as a self-declared “political opponent” of Netanyahu.
It added that the fact that the screening was taking place abroad “makes no difference in this matter.”
Judge Oded Shaham denied the request, but ordered Drucker to respond by Wednesday.
Canadian critic Radheyan Simonpillai, who attended the screening Monday, called the film “Damning. Infuriating. Necessary” in a tweet.
The Bibi Files: As expected. Damning. Infuriating. Necessary. But also so incredibly made. #tiff24
— Radheyan Simonpillai (@JustSayRad) September 10, 2024
Outside the theater, a small group made up mostly of Israeli expats held a protest against Netanyahu, calling on him to reach a hostage release deal in Gaza.
Netanyahu is on trial for fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases filed in 2019, with one case also carrying a bribery charge. The proceedings are expected to take years to wrap up, especially given delays after the first trial was suspended along with all other non-urgent cases due to Hamas’s shock October 7 incursion and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing in the cases against him and claims that the charges were fabricated in a witch hunt led by the police and state prosecution, and facilitated by a weak attorney general.
Gibney had told Variety previously that Netanyahu’s “character comes through very strongly in the recordings.”
He and Bloom started work on the documentary before the war in Gaza erupted, with Gibney saying Monday that the director rushed to get the film ready as quickly as possible.
“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,’” Gibney was quoted as telling Variety earlier.
“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.”
Gibney and Bloom previously collaborated on “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes,” a 2018 American documentary that follows the rise and fall of the late Fox News mogul Roger Ailes.
The film is set to screen a second time at TIFF on Tuesday.
