Trailer voor Robin Williams documentaire Robin’s Wish

De wereld stond zes jaar geleden even stil bij het nieuws van de dood van Robin Williams (Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire). Nu zoekt filmmaker Tyler Norwood naar de antwoorden van de iconische komiek tijdens de laatste dagen in de documentaire Robin’s Wish. Hieronder kun je de eerste trailer bekijken.

Voor het eerst wordt Robins strijd tegen een dodelijke neurodegeneratieve aandoening, bekend als Lewy Body Dementia, in details getoond. Door een aangrijpende journalistieke lens werpt dit ongelooflijke verhaal een geheel nieuw licht op de tragedie, schoonheid en kracht achter de geest van een van de grootste entertainers aller tijden.

Susan Schneider Williams, de weduwe van Robin, zei in een verklaring:

“When my husband Robin Williams died, the whole world grieved. During the last year of his life, Robin was confronted with anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, scary altered realities and a roller coaster of hope and despair. With our medical team’s care we chased a relentless parade of symptoms but with very little gain. It wasn’t until after Robin’s passing, in autopsy, that the source of his terror was revealed: he had diffuse Lewy body disease. It was one of the worst cases medical professionals had seen.”

Ze vervolgde:

“Armed with the name of a brain disease I’d never heard of, I set out on a mission to understand it, and that led me down my unchosen path of advocacy. With invaluable help from leading medical experts, I saw that what Robin and I had gone through, finally made sense — our experience matched up with the science. And what I discovered along the way was bigger than me, and bigger than Robin. The full story was revealed during the making of this film and it holds the truth that Robin and I had been searching for. Robin’s Wish is Robin’s story, it’s our story, and in some ways it’s a universal one — as we all understand what it means to search for answers, to experience love and loss and the power of healing that keeps us going. Finally, a note about the film title: Robin wanted to help all of us be less afraid. That was Robin’s wish. We had been discussing what we wanted our legacies to be in life; when it was our time to go, how we wanted to have made people feel. Without missing a beat, Robin said, ‘I want to help people be less afraid.’”

Robin’s Wish

De documentaire bevat interviews met Schneider Williams en een aantal voormalige medewerkers en vrienden van Williams, waaronder Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum-franchise), John R.Montgomery (The Crazy Ones), Rick Overton (Mrs.Doubtfire) en David E. Kelley (The Crazy Ones). Regisseur Tyler Norwood zei in een verklaring:

“Robin’s Wishis the retelling of an ending to a story that was never done the justice it deserved. Robin Williams was very much an influence on my life and so when he passed with such violence and general uncertainty it affected me deeply. However, like most people, I quickly buried that uncertainty as I went about my life, too busy with my day to day affairs to treat the questions around Robin’s passing as much more than a place I’d rather not go — telling myself instead that I would remember him only as the man who made me laugh and feel so much in my life. This process of denial of Robin as a man instead of a string of characters was interrupted when his widow, Susan, reached out to me to ask if I’d have any interest in making a science documentary about a neurological disease I’d never heard of — Lewy body dementia. I told her no, and that it would take years until we’d be sitting in a theater and watching any movie I agreed to make, so I asked her what would sustain her in that. She began telling me about herself and Robin, and what they went through in the last year and a half of his life. I told her if that was the film, I was in.”

Hij vervolgde: