Ondi Timoner Chronicles Her Father’s Quest for Dignified Death

Last Flight Home is a warts-and-all account of assisted death best viewed by the terminally ill and their loved ones. Ondi Timoner’s Sundance-debuting Last Flight Home is both a celebratory tribute to, and a shockingly intimate portrait of, a hardworking business and family man, whom adversity rendered a mensch. Indeed, the nonagenarian entrepreneur at the heart of this vérité doc — a Miami native who founded Air Florida, the fastest-growing airline in the world during the 1970s — was living an idyllic life until a neck cracking by a masseuse left the vibrant extrovert partially paralyzed at the age of 53. To compound the tragedy, this freak accident occurred before the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, thus allowing the upstart air carrier to legally force out the man responsible for building it. Nonetheless, with Sunshine State optimism, grit, and drive — and the love and support of an adoring family, including a filmmaker daughter named Ondi — Eli Timoner managed to create a joyful, independent, and dignified life for himself. Which is why he ultimately decided to end that life, on his own terms.

To read the rest of my review visit Hyperallergic.