The parents of a Hollywood actor who died tragically at a young age spoke out about the decision to make a documentary about his life.
Anton Yelchin died at the age of 27 after a freak accident in 2016 involving his car.
The actor had not appeared at a rehearsal on 18 June, 2016 and friends found his body in the early hours of the following morning pinned between his Jeep and a brick pillar in his home.
Yelchin had got out of his car to check if there was any post at the gate to his home when the car apparently rolled back down the steep driveway and trapped him against the pillar.
The coroner put his cause of death down to ‘blunt traumatic asphyxia’ and said there were ‘no obvious suspicious circumstances involved’.
In 2019 the documentary film Love, Antosha released to incredibly positive reviews, which was first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival by Anton’s parents Viktor and Irina Yelchin.
Anton Yelchin died tragically at the age of 27, his parents made the documentary Love, Antosha about him. (Tommaso Boddi/WireImage)
Speaking before the documentary was released, Anton’s father Viktor told IndieWire about what spurred them to agree to make the documentary film Love, Antosha.
He said: “The proposition was made by Jon Voight when it was a couple of months after it happened.
“We talked to him, I would say that he’s a friend of our family, and we just like said ‘we don’t see any reason to live any more because our life, it is done’.
“And he said ‘no, no, no, no, no, you have to do a lot of things for Anton’. One of the things is make a documentary about him.”
Voight had starred alongside Yelchin in the 2015 short film Court of Conscience, and the actor’s parents got in contact with Drake Doremus, the director of 2011 film Like Crazy which Anton starred in.
Yelchin’s parents Irina and Viktor said that Jon Voight persuaded them to make the documentary. (YouTube/Indie Wire)
Doremus felt he was too close to Anton to direct the documentary, and suggested Garret Price helm the project, which garnered strong ratings from critics.
Irina said: “Drake bought Garret to the house and we spoke, and then I saw, I don’t know how, I just felt this was the right person to direct the film.
“He reminded me of Anton because he’s very kind and humble, he was so shy talking about it.”
Nicolas Cage worked on the documentary as the narrator, while the film revealed Yelchin’s struggles with cystic fibrosis which he had kept from the public.
There were also many interviews with Yelchin’s co-stars throughout his career, with the likes of his Star Trek co-stars Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and John Cho among them, along with interviews with Willem Dafoe, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Lawrence and many others.
Love, Antosha can be streamed on Prime Video.
