If you’re planning on seeing The Last Flight Home at the cinema, don’t make any plans for afterwards as you’ll be completely done in. I soaked the top half of my jumper with the crying, and then needed to race home to wring it out. It’s an unflinching documentary from film-maker Ondi Timoner following her father in the last days of his life right up to the moment he dies. Old age is no place for sissies, Bette Davis once famously remarked, and neither is this film. But it is also about how to live, how to be a mensch, and so full of love and respect. Plus, the older you get, the less of a sissy you can be. (Or so I find.)
Ondi Timoner (Dig!, We Live in Public, Mapplethorpe) had only intended to film her father, Eli, so that she might have some footage for his memorial, but then kept on filming with his full consent.
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