Everyone who loved my father understood his reasons to be done with this life on earth. He had been paralyzed for 40 years because of a stroke resulting from his neck being manipulated in a massage when he was only 53 years old. By 2021, he was 92 — weak, frail, battling terminal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and falling a lot. He was tired of the fight. He would do anything for us, so how could we deny him his wish?
We found there was a law in California that would allow our father to take his own life with the help of medication after a 15-day waiting period, so we brought him home from the hospital to die on his own terms.
Ondi Timoner
David Livingston/Getty Images
Over the past 30 years, I’ve used my camera as a diving bell, plunging into worlds that I could never otherwise enter and reemerging to bring my findings from the depths to the surface. I try to make my films visceral empathy bridges that transport the audience into the world of the subject. Eleven features and hundreds of shorts have been born of this mission — to inspire audiences to question what they consider immutable and take action in their lives. I’ve counted on my films to do this work and have never felt driven to follow them with political action, until now. …
I thought I knew how transformative films can be in changing the world, one viewer at a time, but with Last Flight Home, I was the one who would be forever changed. I discovered an underserved population that is vast — universal, even — and needs our advocacy: the terminally ill and their families. We don’t see them until we are among them, because our society isn’t comfortable with the reality of death.
I was 9 years old when my father had his stroke, and I have no memory of him able-bodied, so I felt a desperate need to try to bottle him up somehow, before he was gone from us forever. When I began filming, I had no plans to share it with the public. The cameras were like a safety net for me. They helped me survive the loss of my favorite person in the world and allowed me to be present fully as his daughter and caregiver, because I didn’t have to worry about forgetting a single brilliant, kind, witty word he said. It was all recorded.
Two weeks after Dad’s passing, I opened the footage and found Dad there, alive in the editing system! He was now where he wanted to be and no longer suffering, so I could grieve with a dimension very few people have ever been blessed to experience. As I moved from daughter to filmmaker, I found it so profound to witness all of the people coming into the beautiful, sacred space around Dad and grappling with the greatest issues of life and death — and Dad, though he was the one dying, was loving them, making them laugh, inspiring them with his fearlessness.
Even as I edited, I worried about sharing my family at their most raw and vulnerable, but what we experienced over those weeks was so profound, it felt wrong not to. I remember the moment I called Dad in the hospital to ask his permission to film and he replied, “I instinctively know you are on the right track.” That was an interesting answer because I hadn’t yet known what track I was on.
I thought I was sharing a personal film. I did not consider it a political document, but as people approached us through tears to share their own stories of losing their loved ones, to thank us for “the gift” the film gave them of relief and healing, planning their own goodbyes, even reuniting with estranged parents and shedding long-held shame, I realized, as feminist Carol Hanisch said, “the personal is political.” Because it is such a raw, intimate look into “the unfilmable” (as Werner Herzog once described it), I realized it might have the power to change laws.
Meeting so many audience members who carry the pain of watching those they love struggle for years, begging for mercy and without the option to end their own suffering, I became determined to do whatever I could to help the millions of terminally ill people in this country gain the basic human right to bodily autonomy. These people are sick and fighting for their lives — they don’t have the energy to become activists and fight for this. We need to fight for them.
Every family I’ve met with access to medical aid in dying describes the peace and hope it gave their loved ones, who finally had a feeling of agency over their own bodies, and the healing closure it gave their families — because they knew the date and could come together to say goodbye.
This is the story of Last Flight Home, and none of the beauty in it would have been possible without my father being able to exercise his human right over his own body. Yet medical-aid-in-dying, or “death with dignity,” statutes exist in only 10 states in the U.S. and Washington, D.C.
So I made it a goal to try to get medical-aid-in-dying statutes passed into law in seven states where the movement is currently making great progress. We partnered with Compassion & Choices, the largest advocacy group in the U.S. for end-of-life choices, and are touring the states, screening the film, joining with experts and advocating by sharing our story.
Next up, we will travel as a family to Washington, D.C., to screen the film and meet with members of the House and Senate to ask for a repeal on the federal ban on funding for medical aid in dying in the states where it is currently a right, so that every citizen can have equal access to this right, no matter their financial status.
It’s time to pay it forward so families everywhere can have the option to experience this difficult, final transition with grace and dignity.
My father was in a lot of pain that I could never take away, but at least, thanks to the alchemy of film, his suffering can help others to suffer less. He promised he would watch over us, and I believe this film is his final gift to me, to my family and now — to us all.
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
