This paper considers the notion and the phenomenon of essay in literature and film with the help of theoretical perspectives in literary-philosophical investigations by Theodor Adorno, György Lukács, Vilém Flusser, Gerhard Haas, Milivoj Solar, Roland Barthes and Réda Bensmaïa as well as perspectives in film studies by José Moure, Christa Blümlinger or Phillipe Lopate. Essay is marked by freedom and process and its main feature is fragment, preferring plurality over hierarchy, calling for contradiction over unconditional explicitness. Essays in literature and film are structured using fragments and that its every segment, in most cases, can function independently. Essayistic strategies present the work that becomes a place of instability, re-examination and revision of thoughts. Essay-films dissolve cinematic presentation boundaries and can absorb or incorporate different genres and themes through: biography, autobiography, history, culture, fiction, criticism, poetry, photography, illustration and film itself. The essay-film’s character is constitutively informal, and as such is not clearly defined in film studies. Namely, the essay-film often presents a meditation on a specific theme instead of the causal-effect sequence of a story as is expected in fictional film. Essay in general represents a process whose goal is exploration and not necessarily a rounded-off work with a single meaning and explicit statement. The constitutive informal character of the essay is manifested through the presence of the following elements which make essay discussable: associative presentation, dialogism, processuality, discursiveness, fragmentariness, non-linearity, reflexivity, reflection, rhizomatic treatment, rumination.