JFI Members' Screening: Last Flight Home

Sneak Preview in partnership with MTV Documentary Films

Director Ondi Timoner expected to attend

Behind a white picket fence, on an unremarkable suburban street, we discover 92-year-old Eli Timoner, who founded Air Florida, the fastest growing airline in the world in the 1970s. During his final days, we discover his extraordinary life filled with incredible success and devastating setbacks and, most importantly, the innate goodness that won him the enduring love and support of his family. Through stunning verité footage recorded by his middle child, LAST FLIGHT HOME takes audiences on an unforgettable ride through Timoner’s life, illustrating a modern-day success story built on the power of human connection.

Two-time winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Documentary Grand Jury Prize (DIG!, We Live in Public), Ondi Timoner has created her most personal verité film yet, which intimately portrays her family’s challenging journey to find closure and invites us into a rare and honest confrontation and conversation with mortality. The film is not only a unique and open display of the process of death, without inhibition or sanitization, but also a humanization of the journey of a family ‘midwifing’ a patriarch through his final days. Rather than placing death at a distance — as something that happens to someone else — the film invites the audience to experience this mysterious and often terrifying part of life alongside the Timoner family and encourages them to get to know Ondi’s father — his triumphs, and his struggles, and how he works to make peace with them just before he passes on. As the Timoners open up their lives to offer an enlightening view of a universal experience, they demonstrate the grace and connection that can emerge from embracing death. Through laughter and joy, they share a lasting legacy which demonstrates how we might live, even as we die.