“The Bibi Files,” a documentary about Benjamin Netanyahu that features never-before-seen video of the Israeli Prime Minister being interrogated by police on corruption allegations that led to his indictment in 2019, will be available to stream on Jolt.film beginning Dec. 11.
In September, Netanyahu attempted to block “The Bibi Files” from premiering at the Toronto Film Festival. The doc, directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, ultimately screened at the fest hours after a Jerusalem court rejected Netanyahu’s suit, which claimed that the film violated Israeli law by making use of unapproved interrogation footage.
Given its political nature “The Bibi Files,” not surprisingly, did not sell to any major streamers following the doc’s Sept. 9 TIFF debut. Bloom and Gibney ultimately decided to bring the film to Jolt, a direct-to-consumer film distribution platform that launched in March with Ross Kauffman’s documentary “Of Medicine and Miracles.” Recent Jolt releases include docus including “Hollywoodgate” and “No One Asked You.” In December, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s Sundance 2024 doc “Gaucho Gaucho” will be available to stream on Jolt.
“I’ve been interested in alternative modes of distribution because I feel like in the wake of this (corporate) consolidation, it’s desperately needed,” says Gibney, who serves on the advisory board of Jolt. “There are films, good films being made that audiences want to see and it’s as if the big players actually are interposing themselves and making it impossible for those good films to be seen by the viewers who want to see them. So, this seems like a great opportunity to do something new and different.”
Bloom adds, “Even though Israel is in the papers every day, all day, nobody wanted to touch this film. Alex and I just felt that instead of having to make concessions with the film, like neutralizing the controversial bits, that we should lean into another great option that technology has to offer us, which is Jolt. The streamers came up quickly and suddenly and then were ubiquitous. Maybe Jolt could be a ubiquitous platform for the films that the streamers don’t want to or are afraid to take on.”
Meant to give a literal jolt to an indie film that might have been a success at festivals across the world but has not found traditional distribution, Jolt was conceived by the same team that birthed Impact Partners – a documentary funding company committed to social issue-driven films with one of the largest investment portfolios in the independent nonfiction sector.
“In the past two years, the streamers have withdrawn,” says Jolt and Impact Partners co-founder Jim Swartz, founder of Accel Partners, a venture capital firm that was an early investor in Facebook. “Nobody wants to touch anything that’s theoretically sensitive to this group or that group, whether it’s a political or issue-driven film. So, everybody is wringing their hands about the state of the industry and asking, ‘What do we do about it?’ Saying that we need government funding. We just got tired of all that and said, ‘Let’s try to do something about it. Let’s actually try to build a platform that is filmmaker-forward and filmmaker-friendly.”
The curated platform, which will eventually offer 20 to 25 films – both docs and narratives- over the course of a year, does not charge filmmakers to join. Filmmakers determine Jolt ticketing fees – it will cost $12 to see “The Bibi Files” – and then the company uses advanced data analytics and machine learning to build performance marketing plans to find audiences for each specific film and raise awareness. All collected data is shared with each respective Jolt filmmaker.
“We have built a robust and state-of-the-art audience discovery large language model (LLM) AI model,” says Swartz. “Every film that we take on, we spend a month from just a human point of view, but also from a machine intelligence point of view, identifying the top 10 audiences for a film. Then we go on the social media and we develop very specific short ads for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc to target those audiences that we’ve identified. So, we can rapidly build an audience on a film by film basis.”
It’s not meant to be a warehouse for film titles — after 90 days on the site, docus are taken down from Jolt. After direct marketing costs are recouped, Jolt does a 70/30 revenue split with filmmakers. (70% to the filmmakers). Jolt uses any profits made to sustain the for-profit platform. Directors retain ownership of their movies and all future rights.
“The Bibi Files” is the jolt that Jolt has been looking for. It’s a film about Netanyahu – a person that arguably the entire world is interested in for various reasons. Finding an audience for the docu will not take much data analysis. Instead, the hope is that the film will legitimize Jolt and entice more filmmakers to work with the company.
“The fact that Alexis and Alex are embracing Jolt and saying, ‘You know what? The systems are broken. We are going do this our own way because this film deserves a giant audience and we feel good about going direct audiences,’” says Jolt CEO Tara Hein-Phillips. “That is a big piece of making it more acceptable for filmmakers to say no to bad deals. They are showing people that going with different alternatives could really be viable for them.”
Swartz adds, “If we do one ‘Bibi Files’ every six months or once a year, we will build an enterprise that allows us to take on films that don’t have such big audiences. We want to be able to generate enough funds from doing a film like this to allow us to do the smaller audience or niche audience films.”
Bypassing traditional distribution mechanisms and going directly to consumers has proven profitable in other sectors of the entertainment industry.
Several comedians have found success by filming their own stand-up comedy specials in order to sell them on their own websites. In 2012, Louis CK famously sold his standup special “Live at The Beacon” for $5 via his website, and made $1 million in 12 days.
“We are not trying to build a big empire here,” says Swartz. “All we are doing is applying the normal business marketing tools to the film world.”
“The Bibi Files” will have an Oscar qualifying run in November.
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