On Falling

Filmmaker Laura Carreira’s debut feature, following her acclaimed shorts The Shift and Red Hill, is an intimate and clear-eyed portrait of social and financial precarity as Portuguese migrant Aurora struggles to make ends meet over the course of a week in Scotland. Long days spent grabbing packages off shelves and scanning barcodes at the cavernous e-commerce warehouse where she works as a picker leave Aurora exhausted and looking forward to her rides home with a Portuguese co-worker. Together, they dream of landing an office job with regular hours and decent pay.

Set against the drab blues and greys of fluorescently lit industrial spaces and the utilitarian common room of the migrant boarding house where she lives, Aurora’s moments of respite and human connection are fleeting. There’s a laugh shared in the cafeteria before everyone responds to the siren call of their smartphones and an invitation to join a group at the nearby bar where the crush of bodies on the dancefloor is what passes for physical intimacy.

Joana Santos is a quiet revelation as Aurora, allowing subtle registers of anxiety and resignation to play just beneath the surface of her open expressions. The film’s unwavering gaze shows how small setbacks can so easily derail the lives of shift workers and point towards larger economic forces. But Carreira’s light touch lends lyricism and remarkable compassion to Aurora’s all-too-familiar plight.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: themes of suicide