‘It’s a right over our own bodies’: a remarkable documentary on medically assisted death

‘Getting to bring him home and put his bed right in the middle of the living room and then surround him with love was the greatest gift.’ Ondi Timoner and Eli Timoner in Last Flight Home. Photograph: Courtesy of MTV Documentary Films

In late January 2021, Eli Timoner was hospitalized with difficulty breathing. It had been a long, slow physical decline. The 92-year-old entrepreneur and father of three had been paralyzed for 40 years after a stroke when he was 53; during the isolation of Covid, his mobility worsened, putting a great strain on his wife of 55 years, Elissa. Now, due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure, he was permanently bedridden. Reached by phone in the hospital by his daughter, the documentary film-maker Ondi Timoner, Eli reports that he feels finished, is “just waiting to die”.

“Waiting to die?! I thought you were waiting to see me today,” a shocked Ondi responds. But Eli is adamant: “If they could give me goodbye powder, I’d take it.”