“The Bibi Files” opens by promising to show viewers leaked videos from the police investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel (ubiquitously known as Bibi), who is currently standing trial on corruption charges. The videos, a title card says, “are being shown for the first time in this film.”
But in some ways the interrogation footage is the least interesting part of this documentary, directed by Alexis Bloom (“Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes”). After decades in the public eye, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are both practiced stonewallers, while their son Yair accuses the officers questioning him of being “a police force of Mafiosos” and participating in a “witch hunt.” More surprising are the snippets from the investigators’ interviews with Miriam Adelson and husband, Sheldon, the hotel and casino magnate who died in 2021. These longtime Netanyahu allies here sound, in admittedly brief clips, like they’re trying to distance themselves from Bibi and Sara.
Beyond the videos, the movie takes a thorough, methodical approach to laying out the case against Netanyahu, even if few of its arguments are new. Bloom and her camera subjects trace, over decades, his strengthening grip on the Israeli government, his apparent taste for luxury items and his aggressiveness in stifling criticism.
Avi Alkalay, the former editor in chief of the news website Walla, owned by a Netanyahu associate, recalls being pressured to make the publication’s coverage less critical. (The code words, he says, were “less paprika.”) Netanyahu is described as expending precious political capital with John Kerry, then the U.S. secretary of state, to get a visa renewed for the producer Arnon Milchan, who, according to prosecutors, had given the Netanyahus hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts.
And if claims about back-scratching, cigars and champagne may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of Netanyahu’s rule, the film furthers the oft-made case that his methods of avoiding accountability have jeopardized Israel’s security. The documentary examines his alliance with far-right politicians and his continued pursuit of the war in Gaza, which, multiple interviewees argue, no longer has any achievable objective.
Many of the most potent statements come from Raviv Drucker, an investigative reporter and a producer of the documentary, and Uzi Beller, a childhood friend who began speaking out against the prime minister. (The first time we see him, he makes clear that he wants to distinguish between two men: He calls them “my kind of Bibi,” rather than “the crowd kind of Bibi,” and “Netanyahu.”)
Less persuasive is the film’s portrayal of Sara Netanyahu as a kind of Lady Macbeth figure. (“I think Bibi is afraid of Sara,” says Hadas Klein, a former assistant to Milchan.) That may or may not be accurate, but the characterization has the effect of making excuses for Netanyahu’s own maneuvering. “He knows what he’s doing,” Beller says. “It’s not that he doesn’t know.”
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