Synopsis
Exit Music is a documentary film that travels the intimate and complex journey of terminal illness. Artist-musician Ethan Rice was born with cystic fibrosis, an incurable genetic illness that eventually leads to respiratory failure. Equal parts comedy and heartache, Exit Music is the last year, last breath, and final creative act of Ethan Rice as he awaits the inevitable. With stunning access, the film closely follows Ethan’s final months, weeks, days and hours and is witness to death’s transformative influence on a family. Home video footage traces the bond between Ethan and his father Ed, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD who withdrew from the world to become a stay-at-home dad. Ed immersed Ethan in a world of art, creativity, and imagination and documented it all on camera, a hobby that provided relief from the fear of his son’s ominous prognosis and his own painful past. Interweaving home movies with Ethan’s original music and animation, his story is an unflinching meditation on loss and invites the viewer to experience Ethan’s transition from reality to memory. In a culture that often looks away from death, Ethan’s story is a reminder that dying is a profound and universal cornerstone of the human experience.
