On Falling, a first feature directed by Laura Carreira, is a worthy addition to the Ken Loach trilogy on Sixteen Films: the lives of people struggling on low-wage or zero-hours contracts.
Modern Britain
by Alexa DalbyOn Falling
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Aurora (poignant central performance by Portuguese film star Joana Santos) is a Portuguese worker in a Scottish warehouse. Amazon refused permission to film in theirs so the film had to create a set.
The film opens with queues of workers going to clock on through turnstiles like cattle. Aurora is a picker, her working life in the warehouse dominated by the pace of work determined by technology she has to satisfy, and living in one room in a house-share with other workers of different nationalities, whom she rarely sees because all are on varying shifts.
We never see her back story – why she is in Scotland, why she is so alone despite being so pleasant – we just see her repetitive days and repetitive lonely meals eaten to keep alive but with no apparent enjoyment. The implication is that she is a prisoner in her own life.
She is just about surviving when she accidentally breaks her mobile phone. Being without it and finding the £99 it costs to repair is a disaster for her and creates other hardships. When she attends an interview for a better-paid care job, she is so dehumanised by her job that having to think about what she actually likes doing unexpectedly overwhelms her.
More setbacks happen when a friendly co-worker without prior warning commits suicide and a lively new housemate is only interested in being a peripheral friend.
The film is shot like a documentary. The colour palette and Aurora’s clothes are drab and dismal, like her life. It’s full of subtle details – reading them gives a picture of a kind of life in Britain today, and what it’s like for someone trying hard, failing and falling through the cracks.
On Falling won the Sutherland Award for the most original and creative film at the BFI London Film Festival and is released on 7 March 2025 in the UK.
