User reviews

With all of her work, Esther Bell always manages to take her camera to places that most film audience members would be uninvited to go. She does this not with elaborate staging and sets, but accomplishes her purpose by shooting within the actual environment of her story.

Her films are the excellent reverses of traditional time and socio-economic period pieces. She is a filmmaker who is first-person-familiar with the characters and conditions she brings to the screen.

With her second film, Exist, Esther proves again that she is a skilled artist. Her genius is in presenting the here and now of a separate sub-cultural world that would otherwise have remained one-dimensional and stereotyped in our mind's judgment.

Esther opens our eyes for a second look even as her lead character also discovers that first impressions can be condemning fatal. "Exist" is a journey of discovery turned upside down and inside out. It is a film neither dressed up for show, nor dressed down for impact. It is what it really is, and therein exists a mystery.

As you leave the theater you have to admit, "I've not actually been there, and done that before." And when next you think you have, you'll probably be blindly wrong again.

Before watching this movie i did not know what to expect. It turned out to be a great movie that brings to light important issues. This movie is about a young man who didn't care enough about what was going on around him and ends up deeply caring about his lost friend. Through the movie he learns the importance of standing up for what he believes in and how important it is to help others. The movie also brings forth issues within our prison system. It shows that corporations not only acquire free labor from third world countries but from our prison system also. Esther Bell is a great writer/director and I can't wait to see more movies from her.

Is it just me, or was this movie totally rubbish! What point did the director try to make??? I really don't get it! C for yourself and you find yourself waiting for an hour and half to NOTHING.

I saw this movie at the Rotterdam Film Festival and surprisingly the actors and the director were there as well, lucky me! The director told us that we had a chance to talk to the actors after we saw the movie, jippy!!

I still regret not speaking with Ben Barlett cause he's really a good actor but he's just in a terrible movie, hope his next film will be better........

While at the Rotterdam film festival, I attended one of the three sold out screenings of Exist. It was an interesting movie that gave a look at American culture that never makes the main-stream media. The young people in the story where refreshing in the respect to their idealistic view of the world. I felt it was worth my effort to get in and see it. Hats off to a film that encompasses the spirit of the independent film industry." While watching the interaction of the two main characters it reminded me , and hopefully all the others who have watched this, that there are pressing issues in the United States of America, that the energies of our young people could be utilized for benefits of us all. I think this would be a worthwhile experience for anybody to see..

Ostensibly about a circle of friends living on the very edge of a totally precarious world, the film sustained some strong emotional undercurrents that ran deep below the surface, as it turned into the story of one man's desperate attempt to save another. After a policeman is shot during a raid on a communal squat, the housemates disperse to go on with their lives - some still committed and some hyper-normalized. But one of them decides to find a way to help the housemate who disappeared into in hiding, pursued by the police. His mission takes him from social responsibility to blind obsession. I was very engaged by Esther Bell's minimalist visual style, which coupled brilliantly with some smart, fresh writing.