US documentary to air extensive new footage from Netanyahu’s questioning in graft cases
An American documentary on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to be screened at a film festival in Toronto next week, with previously unseen footage of the Israeli premier being questioned by police between 2016 and 2018.
According to Variety magazine, the recordings of the corruption investigation were leaked to renowned director Alex Gibney last year and feature interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife Sara and his son Yair, as well as of friends, associates and household staff.
He was ultimately charged with fraud and breach of trust in three cases filed in 2019, as well as with bribery in one of them. The trial, which began in 2020, is ongoing and likely to take years to wrap up.
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.
TIFF Docs scores a big one! Festival adds THE BIBI FILES, which features never-before-seen police interrogation footage of Netanyahu. Doc by Oscar winner Alex Gibney and Alexis Bloom will screen as work in progress. #TIFF24 https://t.co/y5c0BLlNn8
— POV Magazine (@POVmagazine) September 2, 2024
“These recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary,” Gibney is quoted as saying by Variety. “They are powerful evidence of his venal and corrupt character and how that led us to where we are at right now.”
The report adds that the recordings, consisting of thousands of hours of interviews, have not been screened locally or abroad, due to Israel’s privacy laws.
Gibney collaborated with director Alex Bloom on the documentary, who says that Netanyahu’s “character comes through very strongly in the recordings.”
“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,” she is quoted as saying.
The film is scheduled to screen on September 10 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Theatre as part of the film festival.
