‘The Bibi Files’ to Distribute on Jolt: “A Lot of the Major Outlets Just Were Nervous”

The Bibi Files, the explosive documentary containing leaked footage of interrogations in the ongoing corruption trial of Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, is set to stream on the new platform Jolt.

The film from director Alexis Bloom (Divide and Conquer, We Steal Secrets) and producer Alex Gibney (The Inventor, Going Clear) will stream on the platform starting on Dec. 11 for 90 days, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Streaming the film will cost $12 on Jolt, which launched earlier this year and is currently also distributing Venice Film Festival entry Hollywoodgate, with Sundance jury prize winner Gaucho Gaucho to come in December. Variety was the first to report on The Bibi Files‘ distribution.

The decision comes after the film garnered distributors’ interest in international markets but not in the U.S., Gibney tells THR. “It was clear that a lot of the major outlets just were nervous, radically nervous, I would say, about doing anything that was remotely controversial because it might offend some people even though it would interest many,” he says. “The environment’s different than it has been in the past so we wanted to go with a new mechanism that I think is a way of getting to audiences in a very innovative way, because the algorithms they employ are designed to try and find viewers and not to change the content.” (Gibney, who sits on an advisory board for Jolt, appears to be referring to streamers’ use of their data to advise filmmakers on creative decisions.)

Gibney adds that that some outlets would also need a long lead time to handle a film like this one, but the filmmakers felt demand for the film was urgent, given the spotlight on Netanyahu during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Concurs the director, Bloom, “What I didn’t want to happen was for it to get caught in the cogs of a more traditional outlet who would say, ‘Okay we’re going to take your film but we can only release at the end of next year.’ Which can happen.”

Bloom’s film details the long-running corruption case against Netanyahu, using both interrogation footage of Netanyahu, his wife Sara and son Yair as well as interviews with former Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Netanyahu aide Nir Hefetz, previous head of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon and investigative journalist Raviv Drucker. Netanyahu filed a lawsuit against the film and Drucker, attempting to block its release, before its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. An Israeli judge rejected the attempt and the screening went ahead as planned.

Gibney says he’s been “besieged” with calls and emails about the film even as major entertainment companies shied away. “We wanted somebody who would lean in to this with us because we know audiences want to see it,” he says.

Before its streaming release, the film will complete a short Oscar-qualifying theatrical run, opening at the Laemmle theater in Santa Monica, CA on Nov. 15. It will also open day-and-date with the streaming release at the IFC Center in New York on Dec. 11. And the filmmakers say that they are still open to a larger U.S. distribution deal after the initial Jolt run.

In June, the filmmakers behind the Amazon labor organizing documentary Union announced that they were self-distributing the film in the wake of a similar lack of interest from major entertainment companies. That film will be doing its own initial streaming release on the platform Gathr between Black Friday and Giving Tuesday in November.

Jolt CEO Tara Hein-Phillips says she’s seen an uptick in interest in her platform — which carries films across all genres and bills itself as a place for projects “that mainstream media has overlooked” — as documentary filmmakers encounter an increasingly risk-averse environment. “When we first started doing Jolt, I feel like we were still in the shock phase of films not being purchased,” she says. “And then there was almost a despondency phase, and now we’re really heartened by filmmakers changing tone about it and thinking ‘Wait a moment, this is an opportunity.’”

Of the distribution landscape at large, Bloom says, “We need more places for films to live and we need to come up with creative solutions.” She adds, “We’re all watching our films digitally and the idea that streamers would dictate what gets seen and doesn’t is antithetical to the idea of the digital world. [The Bibi Files‘ distribution story] says that it needs to be a more plural place and outlets like Jolt are a natural consequence.”

Oct. 26, 10:15 a.m. An initial headline for this story stated that The Bibi Files was self-distributing. It is not self-distributing.