Love, Antosha had its world premiere at the Sundance film festival, where the late actor’s friends and parents shared this film with a welcoming and humbled audience. The documentary, produced by Like Crazy director Drake Doremus and directed by first-time filmmaker Garret Price, proved more than a simple biography. The film is a detailed and loving look at an artist whose curiosity and compassion for art and life was so pure. Here’s what you need to know about the film.

The documentary, Love, Antosha, captures the life of the intellectual, spirited, and beloved artist, Anton Yelchin. Directed by Garett Price and produced by Drake Doremus, the film captures Yelchin’s life story and acclaimed film career that ended at the age of 27 after a freak auto-accident in 2016. Using home video footage, self-shot videos, interviews with friends and Hollywood talent alike – as well as his personal diaries – we are given a comprehensive look inside the mind of an artist who was creatively unbound and yet still internally conflicted.

Antony Yelchin appeared onscreen for most of his life, in a total of 69 film and television projects (most widely known as Chekov in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot). The film celebrates the creativity that Yelchin permeated throughout his life, where stars like Kristen Stewart, Chris Pine, John Cho, and Jennifer Lawrence offer remembrances through on-camera interviews. Whether it was devouring classic films, playing music in his band (The Hammerheads), or furthering his passion for photography, Yelchin was always learning, growing, and searching. But it’s this same anxious artistic drive to pursue his passions that also reveals his restlessness in other areas of his life. The film does not shy away from showing an artist conflicted and often occupied with complexities.

Love, Antosha reveals that Anton secretly battled the auto-immune disease cystic fibrosis (which was never publicly acknowledged), and bouts of breathing and coughing issues. A curious and self-aware person, the documentary portrays one heartbreaking moment when Yelchin researches the average age of life expectancy for people with his disease. The results show less than forty years old. The question may arise as to whether or not, on some intuitive level, the self-aware Anton knew that his life would be short-lived? And if this drove him to subconsciously consume as much art and experiences as he could in his young life.

Beyond his creative and artistic drives, one of the most genuine parts of the documentary is the relationship between his parents, Viktor and Irina Yelchin. Former Russian figure skaters fleeing Jewish persecution in Ukraine, the Yelchins immigrated to the US where they raised their only child, Anton aka Antosha. Whether it was hugging, dancing, or showering her with his affection, Love, Antosha demonstrates his purity of heart by the many handwritten notes that he gave her, all signed “Love, Antosha.”

Love, Antosha is a beautiful dedication of a great artist and missed human being who inspired so many. There’s no shortage of loving things that people have to say about him, remembering how much of an old soul and wise beyond his years he was. But the film also succeeds by not shying away from the other truths of his life. In revealing the insecurities and fears that drove him, it paints an honest picture of a young man’s journey to understand life. It’s in continuing to be curious and compassionate that, beyond just watching his films, Anton will always live on through us all.

LOVE, ANTOSHA (2019)

Starring Anton Yelchin

Directed by Garret Price

93 minutes. Opens this Friday at the Nuart Theatre.

This review originally ran on February 1, 2019, during the Sundance Film Festival