SHREWSBURY FILM SOCIETY
| Director | Laura Carreira |
|---|---|
| Country | UK/ Portugal |
| Year | 2024 |
On Falling is a quietly shattering debut feature from Laura Carreira, a filmmaker whose humane, clear-eyed attention to the lives of precarious workers places her in the lineage of socially engaged cinema. Set in Scotland’s gig economy, the film follows Aurora, a Portuguese migrant employed as a picker in a vast online retail fulfilment centre. Her job is to walk the endless aisles selecting items at the command of a handheld scanner, a device that monitors her pace, scolds her when she falls behind and rewards her with the occasional chocolate bar. The irony of the term fulfilment centre is not lost on Carreira. What she shows instead is the strip mining of a worker’s humanity.
Joana Santos gives a quietly excellent performance as Aurora, whose undemonstrative niceness masks a profound exhaustion. She shares a lift to work with a Portuguese colleague who has to remind her to contribute to petrol money. She is always hungry, always short of cash, and a single mishap with her phone leaves her scrambling to pay a £99 repair bill she cannot afford. Her shared accommodation offers no refuge. The house is full of other young migrants, but the atmosphere is one of isolation rather than community. The churn of the washing machine and the bleep of the scanner become the dominant sounds of her life, replacing conversation with industrial noise.
Carreira’s camera stays close to Aurora, often boxing her into tight frames that emphasise her solitude. Even in the warehouse, surrounded by workers, she is alone. The canteen scenes underline how little meaningful contact exists in this environment. Conversations rarely go deeper than what was on television the night before, including the running joke of a show called The Golden Chain, which everyone references but whose content is never revealed. Aurora’s smartphone becomes her closest companion, a lifeline that is also a reminder of how disconnected she is from the world around her.
The film’s social realism is strong, but Carreira’s focus on a single, well-developed character prevents the work from feeling didactic. She shows how quiet desperation can erode a person’s sense of self. Aurora’s longing for intimacy is so intense it almost takes physical form. A tentative moment of contact with Kris, a new Polish flatmate, is charged with awkwardness and retreat. Later, a stranger’s hand on her arm becomes a heart-breaking image of how starved she is for human connection. These scenes echo the emotional textures found in films like Sorry We Missed You, though Carreira brings a tactile, intimate quality that is distinctly her own.
Aurora’s attempt to escape the warehouse leads her to a job interview as a care worker. She rewards herself beforehand with small indulgences: cakes from a patisserie, a makeover, gestures that affirm her humanity. But when the interviewer asks what she likes doing, the simple act of examining her own life brings her to a crisis. Carreira captures this moment with devastating clarity. It is not that Aurora has no interests. It is that the grind of survival has pushed them out of reach.
On Falling is a study of sadness and exhaustion, but it is also a film about the strategies people use to endure. Aurora’s bland, easy-going manner is not evidence that she is coping. It is a learned invisibility, a way of shrinking herself to survive the demands of a system that treats her as data rather than a person. Yet Carreira does not deny the possibility of hope. Small acts of kindness remain. Life can still be vibrant, as shown in a vividly realised hen night encounter. And while the world has become more compartmentalised by technology, the film suggests that connection is still possible, even if it is fleeting.
Carreira’s debut is a powerful reminder of the human cost behind the convenience of online shopping. It is a film of empathy, precision and quiet fury, anchored by a performance that lingers long after the credits.
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