Doc Featuring Netanyahu Interrogation Tapes Premieres at Film Festival Despite Court Motion to Block Screening

A documentary that features never-before-seen interrogation footage with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu related to his corruption investigation made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Monday night and will screen again on Tuesday night after facing failed attempts by Netanyahu’s government to prevent the screenings.

“The Bibi Files” also includes interrogation footage with Netanyahu’s wife and son, as well as new interviews with key figures who have knowledge of the corruption investigation, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu’s former spokesman Nir Hefetz, and former Shin Bet leader Ami Ayalon. The anti-Netanyahu documentary details the prime minister’s corruption indictment and the charges of fraud, breach of trus,t and bribery that he faced in 2019. It also details how he has stayed in power despite the three corruption cases brought against him and the postponement of his corruption trial.

“The Bibi Files” is directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, who is also a winner of a Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. The film, which was being edited until days before TIFF began, is featured in the film festival as a work-in-progress and is in search of distribution.

A source reportedly approached Gibney last year with the leaked interrogation tapes of Netanyahu. A privacy law in Israel blocks the footage from being shown publicly in the country; however, Netanyahu’s lawyer Amit Hadad requested the judge in his corruption trial block the TIFF screening of “The Bibi Files,” arguing that the film is still bound internationally by the statute of the Israeli privacy law, The Jerusalem Post reported. On Monday, Judge Oded Shaham rejected the request to block the film’s two screenings at TIFF.

After the screening of “The Bibi Files” at TIFF on Monday night, roughly a dozen audience members held signs calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal to end the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has raged for almost a year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. On the street outside the theater before the screening, protesters chanted in Hebrew for new parliamentary elections in Israel, as well as a ceasefire and hostage deal.

“People are dying every day, and we wanted to make a statement with this film,” Gibny told the audience after Monday night’s screening, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “For a lot of Americans, the war goes on and on and on. And a lot of people are wondering ‘why does it continue?’ And I think one of the reasons for taking this film on is to explain a lot of the events that we now see through the corruption, the moral corruption, of this one individual.”

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing and characterized the corruption probe as a politicized witch hunt.

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