The family of a slain Hamas agent is seeking to block the release of a film being made in Israel about his assassination in a Dubai hotel in 2010.

The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was widely blamed on Israel's Mossad spy agency.

Emmanuel Nakash, the French-Israeli director of Kidon, or Spear, has said his film is not meant to be factual. In a plot twist, a gang of criminals murder Mabhouh to frame the Mossad. One scene shows Mabhouh, a senior figure in an Islamic fundamentalist group, flirting in a hotel bar.

Ahmed al-Mabhouh, a cousin, said the family believed the film was a "distortion".