On Falling

A young Portuguese migrant worker in Scotland attempts to reconnect with her humanity in the face of the monotonous and demeaning demands of contemporary warehouse work. Laura Carriera’s acclaimed debut feature is a striking, quietly devastating study of the human cost of our consumerist appetites.

An assortment of accents and cultural backgrounds gather daily under blue-grey fluorescent lights, a plastic doll cries robotically from a warehouse shelf, workers flick through their phones in a cavernous canteen. Laura Carreira’s striking debut is full of arresting images such as these, details which accumulate into a multilayered, quietly revelatory portrait of precarious contemporary working life through the eyes of a young worker.

Aurora (Joana Santos) is a Portuguese migrant living in Scotland, and works as a ‘picker’ at an enormous warehouse. Day after day, she walks through endless shelves, wielding a relentlessly beeping barcode scanner. As Aurora struggles to navigate the quiet indignities of her workplace – surprise drug tests, endless targets, patronising managers – her loneliness mounts, and she seeks to navigate life in a foreign country through surprising encounters with her colleagues.

On Falling is a compelling study of life in the jaws of late stage capitalism, a sobering depiction of the invisiblised workers who prop up our insatiable appetite for convenience. After premiering at TIFF, and winning awards at both the London and San Sebastián film festivals, On Falling announces Carreira as a distinctive new voice continuing a tradition of UK workers films with nuance and warmth.

– Rachel Pronger

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