Finis Terræ

Four men spend a summer on a bare rock off Brittany burning kelp for ash, and one of them cuts his thumb on a broken bottle. He hides it while it goes bad. His friend, who thinks he is shirking, rows him toward Ouessant through fog while the island's only doctor rows out to find them. Jean Epstein shot it on Bannec and Ouessant with the islanders playing themselves, and after years of abstract city films he lets the sea, the rock and the faces set the pace. The first of his Breton films, and the one that decided the direction of the rest.