“It’s about getting to know the first family of Israel in a whole new way,” director Alexis Bloom (Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg) says of her upcoming documentary The Bibi Files. The film features never-before-seen police interrogation tapes of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, his wife, Sara, their son Yair, and many of their close associates, including two high-profile figures: Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The leaked videos offer an inside look at evidence Israeli prosecutors collected during its corruption probe into the country’s longest-serving head of state, an investigation that led to Netanyahu’s 2019 indictment on charges of breach of trust, bribery, and fraud. (Netanyahu has denied all charges. The case is ongoing.)
His government’s subsequent efforts to reform the judicial system were seen by critics as a way for Netanyahu to legislate away his legal problems by lessening the court’s power and were met with mass public demonstrations. Then, in the fall of 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. “Post–October 7,” Bloom tells VF, the war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon “became another tool to stay in power.”
Three separate cases came out of the investigation into Netanyahu; to understand them, Bloom partnered with Israeli investigative journalist and political analyst Raviv Drucker. (Netayanhu has unsuccessfully sued Drucker three times, and as a result of this film, has asked Israel’s attorney general to investigate him.) The film’s greatest coup, though, is the interrogation footage. Bloom is loath to explain how thousands of hours’ worth of leaked videos—mostly in Hebrew, and often with poor picture and audio quality—came into her possession, beyond saying that the windfall was “both a gift, and an enormous challenge.” (The documentary’s producer, Alex Gibney, has said the footage was received unexpectedly.)
The Bibi Files opens with Netanyahu sitting down at his desk in his unremarkable Balfour Street office for one of approximately seven police interviews. A parade of people with first-hand knowledge of his and his family’s alleged crimes give their own accounts in police interrogation rooms. We learn about Netanyahu’s penchant for Cohiba Behike cigars (“$1,100 US dollars for a box of 10,” Sheldon Adelson exclaims to the police), and Sara’s passion for pink Champagne. How does the politician afford such extravagances? According to what Drucker says in the film, Netanyahu “keeps around him, in almost every part of the world, someone like a sugar daddy.”
Milchan’s former personal assistant, Hadas Klein, says in the film that she was responsible for making sure Israel’s first lady never ran out of her favorite pricey beverage. Milchan tells the police that he sometimes personally delivered it to the Netanyahu residence in a cooler: “I felt that the prime minster’s wife will torture him if she didn’t have a little to drink,” he quips to investigators. Sara did make her sacrifices: According to Bloom, Milchan persuaded her to trade Moët & Chandon for another type of champagne that was less expensive. “But she had specific requirements, and would send back Prosecco, and lesser [brands].”
“You can’t say no to them,” Klein says in the film, adding that gifts for the Netanyahus were “demanded” not volunteered. She says onscreen that the prime minister is afraid of his wife, and the Netanyahus’ former housekeeper agrees. “People close to them have all commented on their relationship,” Bloom says. “From former chiefs of staff, to housekeepers, to former heads of Shin Bet [Israel’s internal security service], they all say she is important in terms of how he runs the country.… She knows where he is at all times, she vets his appointments. If she doesn’t like you, you’ll never get a position in government or get close to Bibi. She has a lot of power politically.” In the film, Drucker says that it’s almost like the couple runs the country as a unit.
Miriam Adelson is seen telling investigators that Sara showed her a Tiffany & Co. necklace that Milchan bought her, hinting that she’d like Adelson to give her one as well. Milchan tells the police that before he purchased the jewelry, he sought an assurance from Netanyahu that such a purchase would be kosher. He says that Netanyahu told him, “a friend can give a gift to a friend…just not a house.” Video follows of Netanyahu claiming he didn’t know about Milchan gifting Sara jewelry: “Maybe she did, maybe not.”
“Milchan has always been close to prime ministers,” Bloom explains, noting that the mogul makes it his business to befriend people in power. According to Drucker, Netanyahu attempted to pass an amendment to tax-exemption legislation that could have saved Milchan millions of dollars. Yair Lapid, who oversaw tax legislation at the time as finance minister, told investigators that he advised Netanyahu against that idea and has maintained that he refused to pass the law. (Milchan initially denied the allegations but later reversed his statement and admitted that he did ask Netanyahu for help to “solve” his tax issue.)
When Milchan, a former international arms dealer and Israeli spy, had his long-term US residency visa revoked after publicly boasting about confidential equipment for an Israeli nuclear project, he pressured Netanyahu to get it reinstated. He tells investigators, who initially suspected him of bribery, that he deserved the help: “I can’t just give and give and give,” Milchan says. He also asks the police if they can refrain from using the word bribe. “No,” they reply. Netanyahu tells the police that he and Milchan never spoke about personal matters, except for one thing: the visa. “I perceived it as a matter of national security,” he says. (Last year, Milchan testified that the prosecution’s allegation that the prime minister helped him was “nonsense.”)
Ultimately, Bloom says, the Israeli prosecutors did drop that allegation and declined to press charges against Milchan. “The attorney general gets presented with a massive dossier of evidence. That then gets whittled down to [the allegations] you can really, really prove. For whatever reason…the attorney general decided not to pursue a case against Milchan.… Did the attorney general think that Milchan would be a better witness if his head wasn’t on the chopping block, or did he think that perhaps the evidence wasn’t strong enough?” Bloom wonders. Either way, Netanyahu himself was charged with breach of trust.
Israeli telecom mogul Shaul Elovitch didn’t fare as well as Milchan did. He has been charged with violating the country’s securities law after getting the prime minister to intervene on regulatory issues, an arrangement that allegedly benefited Elovitch in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In return, a former high-ranking employee contends in the film, Elovitch allegedly turned over control of his popular news outlet to Netanyahu. “We felt like a restaurant serving only one person,” the former editor in chief says. Drucker alleges in the film that Netanyahu and Elovitch had a secret meeting to seal the quid-pro-quo deal. (Elovitch has denied the charges against him.) The film shows police asking Yair Netanyahu if he ever tried to influence the outlet’s coverage. The prime minister’s son responds, “No. But if they published lies and slander, I wanted to…I tried to fix it.”
Now, as Israel wages a devastating war on two fronts, “the most disgraceful thing is Yair Netanyahu is living in Miami, when other men his age are serving [as reservists] in the army, or volunteering,” says Bloom. It’s been reported that the Israeli government is paying about 2.5 million shekels a year—the equivalent of more than half a million dollars—for his security, car and chauffeur, daily allowance, and more.
The exposé maintains that Netanyahu keeps military operations in Gaza and Lebanon going as a way to postpone the resolution of his corruption cases. (For years prior to the war, The New York Times has reported, the prime minister sanctioned payments of millions of dollars a month that Qatar sent to support the Hamas government, supposedly to keep peace in Gaza.) Drucker says in the film that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition—Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister—have zero interest in the leader’s legal predicament because he is “the messiah’s donkey,” someone who can realize their fantasies of annexing land and forever killing the idea of a Palestinian state. (Bloom says she reached out to the Netanyahus for comment three times, but never heard back.)
While the film doesn’t cover Netanyahu’s relationship with president-elect Donald Trump, Bloom believes that “Bibi is rubbing his hands [together] with glee” at the American election results: “He knows that he can outmaneuver Trump in a nanosecond. I think he thinks that Trump is going to be putty in his hands.” She adds that people close to Netanyahu have told her that the prime minister has “conflated Israel with himself. He thinks that he is the only person smart enough and canny enough to take custodianship.”
In September, the Israeli government tried to block the release of the film, citing the country’s privacy law. That effort was only partially successful: The Bibi Files had its world premiere Thursday at the DOC NYC festival and will launch a qualifying Oscar run in LA on Friday. It will be available to stream on Jolt.film on December 11. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is scheduled to testify in his corruption trial on December 2, after his latest request for a delay was denied. At least he can take comfort in knowing jurors may not be influenced by Bloom’s work: Due to those privacy laws, the film cannot be shown in Israel itself. At least, not legally.
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