On Falling, Glasgow Film Festival 2025 review by Pat Byrne

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On Falling, Glasgow Film Festival 2025 review by Pat Byrne

Laura Carreira is a Portuguese filmmaker based in Edinburgh. ‘On Falling’, her debut drama, has deservedly already won awards: the Sutherland Award for Best Debut at BFI London Film Festival 2024 and Best Director at San Sebastian Film Festival 2024.

The film follows the life of Aurora (Joana Santos), a migrant worker, who works as a picker at a large warehouse. The work is lonely, mind-numbing and poorly paid. Time management is carefully monitored as the picker selects goods from shelves to fulfil customers’ orders. Much of the film focuses on the 30? year old woman pushing her trolley up and down aisles in the warehouse day in and day out.

We get to understand how the warehouse runs, the friendly seeming approach of supervisors. who are quick to point out if you slow down at all. And the rules that dictate, even if you have a doctor’s appointment, that you cannot have time off unless you put in for it weeks beforehand. When Aurora does well at work, she gets no bonus but is rewarded by being allowed to choose a chocolate bar. She opts for a Wispa. The casual disrespect and lack of appreciation for effort, on top of the boredom and poor pay, is dehumanising.

There is very little social contact between workers other than at meal breaks. When Aurora has a conversation with a male co-worker in the canteen this promises an opportunity for some joy. Later we find out that the pleasant young man has taken his own life. She gets a lift to work from another Portuguese woman, who is striving to improve her work situation. She reminds Aurora that she is due to pay her share of petrol money. When she tells her that she has found a job back home we cannot help but wonder how Aurora will get to work.

Outside of work Aurora shares a flat with other migrant workers, where she spends her time between the kitchen and her bedroom. The flat doesn’t even have a communal lounge or living room.

A new flatmate, a Polish ‘man with a van’, is kindly and Aurora likes him. He includes her in outings to the local pub but shows no inclination towards forming any close relationship.’

Carreira’s film is quiet and slow-moving but she successfully raises our feelings of anxiety for Aurora and a lot of empathy for her tedious, impoverished existence. The film presents hard-hitting social commentary of true relevance for many in today’s gig economy, where any small crisis is a real disaster. Aurora depends heavily on her mobile phone for contact, when it breaks and she has to find £99 to have it fixed, she struggles to feed herself properly and pay her bills.

The director displays her familiarly with working class Scots and there is some humour introduced when Aurora’s supervisor tells her about his new cockapoo. The colloquial dialogue is realistic and impressive too when some drunken women, celebrating with a bride-to-be friend, squash in beside Aurora in a cafe. The contrast between their companionship and high spirits further highlights her lonely existence.

Some hope seems to arise when Aurora gets an interview for a better job in social care. En route to the interview we see another side of her as she treats herself to some cake and takes up the offer from a beautician to try out some new makeup. We see her choosing a striking eye shadow colour that really suits her; it seems almost inevitable that this will be removed and replaced by a more neutral, dull shade that reflects her life.

At the interview she is too worn down to respond properly to the request to tell the interviewer a bit about herself. Any hope and capability has been eroded by her sad and precarious nature of her life.

Laura Carreira excels in highlighting how someone respectable and hard working can be so easily and cruelly starved of physical and emotional nourishment. A thought provoking movie that stays with you.

Pat Byrne, February, 2025

At Glasgow Film Theatre, Saturday 1 March, 2025 1 p.m.

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Part of Glasgow Film Festival 26 February – 9 March 2025