The Bibi Files: Alexis Bloom's extraordinary documentary brings Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption interrogation tapes to the big screen

The Bibi Files, a powerful account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial hold on power, could not arrive at a more appropriate time.

It offers a damning portrait of the unscrupulous politician — universally known as Bibi — who has manipulated regional conflicts and high-level influence to secure his survival in the face of criminal allegations in an ongoing corruption investigation, while continuing reign over the politically fractured State of Israel.

Yet for South African director Alexis Bloom, who was invited to helm the project by long-time collaborator and Oscar-winning producer Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), this was also a "unique opportunity" to highlight the complicity of Netanyahu's family in his quid quo pro dealings with Israeli billionaires like Ami Ayalon and extreme right-wing leanings.

"I wanted to make it a family film and for people to understand that these sort of hero portraits of the singular man are pretty shallow," Bloom explains to The New Arab.

Bloom's team began making the film before the 7 October attack and spent months editing hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage of police interrogation videos of Netanyahu, his family, associates, and benefactors.

They interspersed these deposition scenes with first-hand interviews of former members of the Prime Minister's inner circle to deliver a riveting film that challenges the mainstream narrative surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict and positions Netanyahu as a man fanning the flames of war to hold onto power.

"People may be uncomfortable with it," says Bloom. "But it's just a fact."

The New Arab sat down with the filmmaker to discuss her process and the challenges of making and distributing the film at a time when political films like The Bibi Files are less desired by streamers and broadcasters with a taste for True Crime entertainment:

Hanna Flint for The New Arab: I've seen many films about the Palestinian victims of Israeli oppression but not as many focused on the government corruption that has maintained this conflict. Did making this film feel like a new opportunity to show that?

Alexis Bloom: It felt different because we had the interrogation tapes. I knew I was never going to get an interview with Netanyahu himself. The last person he allowed to interview him was Dr Phil and he described that he was having a bubble bath. He loves to be interviewed as long as he knows it's safe and we wouldn't ever be able to give him those guarantees. So having the interrogation footage, this mother load of unfiltered, immediate access to the character felt unique.

What was the conversation like with Alex Gibney when he approached you to direct the film?

Alex and I have collaborated for a long time on and off. I'm a freelancer, so I'm not part of his company, but I respect him enormously, and he's an extraordinary filmmaker. When Alex calls you, you always listen. He didn't have the bandwidth to do the film. He had other projects that he had to finish, notably one on Elon Musk.

I guess there's only so much Messiah Complex you can take.

It's true. But he called me and he said, Are you interested? And I immediately knew that I was.

As a South African, I assume you had an understanding of the Palestinian plight but when did that awareness begin for you?

I had been going to Israel, on and off, since I was about eight. I did a documentary for National Geographic called The Last Christians of Bethlehem after the wall had been built. I was on the other side of the wall in Bethlehem for three weeks filming the reality of the Christians there, who were caught between the larger populations in conflict during the Second Intifada so I was very familiar with the politics from that perspective.

My dad is Jewish and he was very active in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I see the complexity of it but certain things are simple, like human rights. Being South African gives you the confidence to wade into terrain that sometimes people are more afraid of. I grew up in a controversial environment, I didn't feel nervous about it.

That's the thing, isn't it? So much of that is this fear of offence that has built up over the years and you're trying to cut through that and provide transparency. You've worked on documentaries about corrupt figures before, namely Roger Ailes, so was there anything different in how you approached Netanyahu?

Sara [Netanyahu] is important in this. Roger was a singular male figure. Bibi (Netanyahu) is not despite all the reporting that's done on him. When I see current affairs documentaries like Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza there are always these hero shots of him.

Still, he has an incredibly strong wife who is very involved in political appointments, where he is at all times and what he does. I wanted to make it a family film, and for people to understand that these sort of hero portraits of the singular man are pretty shallow.

Women are not invisible and I find in the Middle East, sometimes in the reporting of serious subjects, it gets quite macho. A real job of mine was having Hadas Klein in there, Gilly Schwartz, who lives on the border, and Sara. I wanted women to be present because they are present.

Can you tell me a little bit about the ease or difficulty of persuading people like Uzi Beller, Netanyahu's childhood friend, to take part?

I found Uzi because he had been mentioned in a biography about Netanyahu. He was so disenchanted with what Netanyahu had done and the road to destruction that he was on that once Uzi was reassured that I was a responsible filmmaker and that the film wasn't going to be a waste of his time or irresponsible, he agreed to do it.

Raviv Drucker, who is the journalist in the film, gave me invaluable help. He knows this story inside out and I remember him describing Meni Naftali [former manager of Netanyahu's official residence] to me as a bit of a wild horse and it helped me figure out how to approach him. There's no substitute for just going to meet people and that's the benefit of long-term filmmaking when you can do things deliberately and methodically, not just parachute into there with a microphone saying, "Talk to me."

The editing of the film does an excellent job of highlighting the lies and manipulations of Netanyahu in public and in the privacy of the deposition tapes. How was that process?

I was really lucky to have Andy Grieve, a fantastic editor, who is somewhat OCD and an incredibly hard worker. We went through this film frame by frame, shoulder to shoulder. We also had a great editor called Halil Efrat, who spoke Hebrew and helped with the interrogation material.

We couldn't tell anyone that we had this material. Everyone was like, "Oh, I'll work remotely from home." I was like, "No, you're coming into the office." We all had NDAs. You feel the pressure to get it right but I'm aware that it doesn't go far enough in some regards.

We don't go into that terrain of: Is he a war criminal? Or is he not? That's not the purview of this film. What we seek to establish is that his criminal trial is a factor in his decision-making every single day and because he's in bed with the extreme right, there will never be diplomacy.

There is a throughline from Netanyahu's early career to 7 October and a little beyond into the current war. What were the things you had to leave out?

There were a lot of interrogations that hit the cutting room floor. Like this guy, Momo Filber, who worked for Netanyahu, saying outright, "Bibi told me to take care of Shaul Elovitch in this media manipulation case." He said, "I wish I'd never done it." It's very damning evidence.

Also a lot of stuff with Sara getting very upset about the effect the interrogations were having on [their son] Yair. She says, "Yair isn't eating as much as he should. Look how thin he is. How can you do this to a child? It's so unfair."

He's not a child though, right?

He's in his mid-20s. He should be in the [IDF] reserves, so he should be in Israel now, and he's not. He left for Miami. So there's a lot of interrogation material that we could have used but we didn't because we had to get to the current day.

You also show that Hamas wasn't just produced in this vacuum, that Netanyahu played an integral part in feeding the organisation. That's a very controversial thing to put out there.

Yeah. Under Netanyahu, the funding of Hamas increased exponentially. That's out there. That's a fact. People may be uncomfortable with it, but it's just a fact.

You first screened the film at the Toronto Film Festival, which the Israeli government tried to block. How has securing distribution been since?

The documentary landscape has changed enormously. There are political films about Russia and Ukraine that can't get distribution either. It's not just films about Israel-Palestine. The streamers don't want political films. They're too controversial. They want entertainment. They want True Crime and they have an algorithm [to feed].

This is a True Crime. Just the wrong kind of True Crime.

They're very nervous, right? Social issue films in general are very hard to lift off the ground without a celebrity endorsement. We showed at Toronto because we needed to make some noise about the film to get the remaining funding because it had been so hard to fund. I found it incredible because Israel's on the front page of the papers every day.

Alex Gibney was the producer and he's Academy Award-winning. I thought if Alex can't raise the money, we're in a bad spot. Thankfully, we have this platform called Jolt, so tell everyone they can buy a ticket and watch it.

There were police dogs and security checks at your Toronto screening. Are you feeling safe at the moment?

People feel passionately about the issue but that shouldn't stop you from saying something. I feel totally fine and safe.

Hanna Flint is a British-Tunisian critic, broadcaster and author of Strong Female Character: What Movies Teach Us. Her reviews, interviews and features have appeared in GQ, the Guardian, Elle, Town & Country, Mashable, Radio Times, MTV, Time Out, The New Arab, Empire, BBC Culture and elsewhere

Follow her on Instagram: @hannainesflint