GFF 2012: Finisterrae

Crossing the Line, the new strand at this year's festival, brings experimental and avant-garde films to the Glasgow, exploring the crossover between cinema and visual art. Finnisterrae is, in many ways, an excellent introduction to experimental filmmaking, blending stunning vistas with an unusual, almost farcical storyline of two ghosts in limbo. Tired of being spirits, they ask oracles and whimsical beings how to become living creatures, resolving to take a journey to Finistarrae - the end of the world. At once weird and wonderful, gently creepy, but remarkably structured, it's a slow and philosophical pilgrimage that invokes odd recollections of Silent Running and Monty Python. Some segues into visual art – a dream of naked dancing ghosts and a self-conscious insert of 80s Catalan visual art – feel forced, but these are balanced with beautifully wacky run-ins with creatures of the netherworld. Above all, the striking image of white-cloaked beings staring into the camera with their jet-black eyes makes Finisterrae an innately compulsive watch. [Nicola Balkind]