The film that put Netanyahu in court

“Netanyahu is very thin-skinned,” Alexis Bloom, the film’s director, tells me. Not content with attempting to prevent the picture reaching Canadian eyes, its subject also requested that the police investigate one of its producers. So for Bloom, the stakes are high. 

In answer to my question as to whether the director herself might face arrest were she to set foot in Israel, Bloom replies, “I’m not gonna test that… I think it’s probably best for me not to go to Israel while he’s prime minister”. 

The Bibi Files’ long march to the screen began when Alex Gibney, another of the film’s producers, received leaked footage of Netanyahu, his wife Sara and their son Yair, as well as a coterie of benefactors and employees, facing questions from Israeli police officers investigating corruption in the corridors of power. After three years of digging, in 2019, “Bibi” – the childhood nickname is used by the prime minister’s allies and enemies alike – was formally indicted on charges of bribery and fraud. 

On December 10, he finally appeared in court. “I have waited eight years for this moment, to say the truth as I remember it,” he said on the stand. 

The qualification is important; in footage seen in the The Bibi Files, Netanyahu’s memory operates some way below spec. Despite otherwise impeccable powers of recall for details and dates, when it comes to having received champagne and cigars from wealthy supporters, he can barely remember a thing. 

Of course, as Netanyahu sees it, there are bigger fish to carpet-bomb. As he reminded the court, “I am leading the country through a seven-front war”. 

At the outset of the project, Bloom was asked by her husband whether audiences would be interested in a movie about the machinations of the Israeli state. Perhaps not, but the atrocities of October 7, 2023 and those that have followed in their wake have afforded The Bibi Files a visceral urgency that might otherwise be lacking. 

In itemising the lengths to which Netanyahu will go to avoid dining on porridge, the film declines to spare the viewer the sight of terrorists murdering people and pets, or of the ruins of Gaza jutting from the ground like broken teeth. Never mind the mayhem, clearly, the fog of a Forever War has its uses. 

“In all honesty,” Bloom tells me, “I think [Netanyahu is] going to dedicate every cell of his being to staying out of prison… He will deploy everything possible [through] his lawyers. 

“He’s said that the fall of Syria was down to him, and is such a tectonic shift in the region that he has to be on duty 24/7 watching and handling this Syrian situation. So he’s going to try everything possible to continue delaying – which he can do. Just because he testified today, that doesn’t mean that he’s going to finish [doing so].”

But if the events of last October cast a dramatic shadow, elsewhere, it is vulgarity that catches the eye. The Netanyahus are spivs, really – brittle hustlers who, when cornered by the cops, resort to obfuscation and outrage. 

Sara, of whom Bibi is frightened to death, is a resentful complainer who kvetches that her family’s personal circumstances pale in comparison to those of their friends Donald and Melania. Eldest child Yair is a feckless playboy whose online ranting has found favour with the – no, really – neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. Weird is relative, of course, but these relatives are pretty weird. 

As they were bound to do, the fun and games come to an end with the inevitable reckoning. In order to keep the Bibi Show on the road, extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir are lassoed into government as coalition partners. A plan to bring the judiciary under prime ministerial control causes outrage in Israel; citizens take to the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. 

Attempts to pit the Palestinian Authority against Hamas leave scores of thousands dead. But no amount of bloodshed, or hostages imperilled in Gaza, can spare Netanyahu from the dock. As his assistant says, “I always knew the cops would call”. 

Of the prospect of Bibi being brought to book, Alexis Bloom is less than hopeful. Speaking from her home in Brooklyn, she tells me of her fears that “Israel is so traumatised and frankly exhausted that I don’t know whether they have the energy any more to send him to jail. He might cut a plea deal and end up getting a rap on the knuckles or a suspended sentence or something like that.” Evidently, it’s not for nothing that the director toyed with calling her film The Wounded Animal. 

In a country in which surveillance footage can only be made public with the consent of those caught on camera, the prospect of The Bibi Files going unseen by the Israeli public has been obviated by the staggering number of people who have watched it via unorthodox means. Elsewhere, in the United States, nervous editors have warned critics against reviewing the film (seeking to protect her sources, Bloom declines to name specific publications). Reassuringly, in Britain, media organisations have proved willing to provide the oxygen of publicity. 

Good. With its patient dispensation of eye-popping details, The Bibi Files provides a masterclass in sophisticated storytelling. It’s also a riot of unchecked privilege. 

The sight of the Netanyahus angrily and airily dismissing the evidence mounted against them serves as a warning against the folly of power. As a younger man studying at MIT, in Massachusetts, Bibi requested that his tutors double his workload so he could complete his studies in half the time. Yet here he is, brought low by a weakness for booze and smokes, baubles and gifts. 

After many months mired in his moral turpitude, I ask Alexis Bloom if she found anything to admire about Benjamin Netanyahu. At the end of a silence lasting a full 10 seconds, the answer comes that she respects his ongoing appetite for reading. 

With demands on his time, this most ridiculous and unrepentant of world figures has even found the perfect place for periods of solitude with the printed word. “I find it humorous that he reads on the toilet,” she says. 

The Bibi Files is  in UK and Irish cinemas and on demand now