The first great work of gig economy cinema: Laura Carreira on her powerful debut On Falling

Ever since I first watched Laura Carreira’s powerful first feature On Falling, I’ve been describing it to anyone who’ll listen as the first great work of gig economy cinema. It’s a pompous statement, but what I’m trying to get at is that I don’t think I’ve seen a film yet which so precisely (and cinematically) captures the experience of precarious work within our present moment of late-stage capitalist madness.

Set in Scotland (the location is ambiguous, although a key scene is shot on Edinburgh’s Princes Street), On Falling follows Aurora (Joana Santos), a ‘picker’ who works gruelling shifts at an Amazon-style fulfilment centre. Originally from Portugal, Aurora is one of many migrant workers who form the warehouse’s atomised workforce. The story follows her over one week, capturing with empathetic precision the effect of this work – with its dehumanising monotony and daily indignities – on her sense of self.

Carreira’s film is a work of unsparing social realism, imbued with topical resonances about the human cost of consumerism (tellingly, it was produced by Ken Loach’s company Sixteen Films). At the same time, the uncanny, neon-lit nether-space of the warehouse lends itself to surreal, dreamlike flourishes, which reflect Aurora’s growing alienation from reality. 

Carreira cites Loach, the Dardennes and Chantal Akerman as key influences, as well as specifically Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970), Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) and Ermanno Olmi’s Il posto (1961), titles which she describes as the film’s “relatives”.

Before On Falling Carreira made several acclaimed shorts – including Red Hill (2018) and The Shift (2020) – which also focused on marginalised characters at the sharp end of societal indifference. Her debut feature, which premiered in Toronto last September to critical acclaim, confirms Carreira as a thoughtful, humanistic filmmaker with a sharp eye for telling details. 

For this interview, I spoke to Carreira (who, like Aurora, is also originally from Portugal but now based in Scotland) shortly before a screening at Glasgow Film Festival.

Where did the idea for On Falling originate?

Laura Carreira: I’d already begun researching precarious work for my shorts, especially The Shift. At that point, I stumbled on the logistics industry, which is rife with this sort of work, and I came across the job of ‘picker’. The idea stemmed from this moment, of learning what this job entails. 

So much of the dialogue around these jobs is about how quickly a parcel gets to you, “innovation and technology,” blah blah. But actually, there’s a person who has to retrieve every item that has been ordered, and they’re being monitored for 10 hours a day as they rush around the warehouse. This was shocking to me. 

As I started researching, I began reaching out to people working in warehouses, and I realised a lot were migrant workers. It made sense to create Aurora, because I knew I could bring my experiences during my first years in Scotland into the film.

What did that research process entail?

I did a warehouse tour, which was open to anyone from the public. But mainly I started reaching out to friends, as I quickly realised there were friends of friends who worked in these warehouses. Other people I found online. These conversations influenced the film a lot, down to the items that Aurora is picking, but they also influenced the themes. 

For example, a lot of people mentioned loneliness. The job is physically tough, but also psychologically demanding, because you’re on your own a lot. The breaks aren’t long enough to engage with others and most people just want to rest. 

A lot of those conversations ended up making it to the film, even down to lines of dialogue. There’s a scene where a character is asked what they do after work, and they say “I do the laundry.” That came from one of those conversations. It seems simple, but it demonstrates how free time becomes taken up by just getting ready to go back to work.

The film shows how the job feeds an isolation which bleeds into every aspect of these characters’ lives.

This theme connects the whole film. Aurora is trying to reach out, but the lonelier she feels, the harder interaction is. That was something I noticed in people’s descriptions. I also drew on my own experience of living in shared flats alongside people with different shift patterns. It’s hard sometimes to build community in those flats. That even comes down to the fact there’s often no living room, because in most cases that’s been converted into a bedroom, so the kitchen is the only space for socialising. I wanted that to come through visually too.

How did you capture that visually? This is a realist film, but also very atmospheric.

It was important to me that time would be felt. This idea of doing a super-repetitive job over which you have no agency – how fast you work, or when you go to the bathroom – I wanted to mark that rhythm. There’s always a risk with long shots of boring people, but it was important to me to say: “Come on, this person is doing this for 10 hours, you can watch it for a minute!” 

During the editing, we tried to get a balance. When Aurora’s interacting, the camera cuts more, but in moments of awkwardness we stay with her. I think this helped to create that sense of exposure. The camera is in this uncomfortable position, almost too close, we’re not cutting away. We also rarely have framing which allows other characters to be part of her space. Then there are these moments where she does reach out and someone holds her, which we shot in close up, because it’s meaningful that someone is touching her. We wanted that to hold the entire frame.

Aurora is quite a mysterious character, did you speak to Joana Santos much about her backstory?

I shared as much as I could with Joana in terms of the research. Joana was really dedicated, she even trained for different positions in a warehouse to learn the rhythms and understand the movements. It was always a balance, because she’s a character who shares little, but in order for us to go on this journey with her, it’s important we understand what she’s thinking. 

We were trying to use all these cinematic elements – the editing for instance, so you know what she’s looking at – to convey what Joana’s thinking, which she got intuitively. Joana has this quietness, but she’s also very transparent. That would’ve been hard to direct, so that was definitely something she brought herself. It’s even more amazing, because she’s this really bubbly person, quite different from the character!

In the rest of the cast, you also used real warehouse workers.

We needed to cast 55 speaking roles, which was quite shocking for me. When I wrote the film, I didn’t realise we were going to need so many people. We found some incredible actors, but we wanted diversity, lots of different accents, which was hard to cast, so we opened it up to non-actors. We ended up finding people who had done that job or still do, and welcomed them to be part of the process. During rehearsals, if I had written certain lines that didn’t feel right, we would improvise so that it felt more natural. That helped the film massively. When you’re the only writer, there’s this danger of everyone sounding like you. This helped deconstruct that.

What was it like to step up from shorts to feature length?

I think short films are the hardest, because you’re learning everything with little support. You’re not taking a salary, so you’re working other jobs on the side. As soon as I finished Red Hill, I wanted to do a feature, because there was so much I wanted to look at, but I was told that I needed to do another short. When The Shift was doing well at festivals, I already had a draft of On Falling, and I was determined to use this wave to move my feature forward. As soon as there was interest in the short I could put that script in front of people and say “this is what I want to do next.” Looking back, that was smart.

The biggest challenge was finding the right producer. I was lucky that the BBC introduced us to Sixteen Films, and we realised we saw cinema in similar ways. I’m a massive fan of Ken Loach, so very quickly I thought this could work. That helped the project massively, because they know how to get something produced. We also had funding from Portugal, so it ended up being a co-production. It was hard, but the strategy was always to get to the next project while the other was in festivals and people were still interested.  

Making a film with a migrant worker in the central role at a moment when there is so much anti-migrant rhetoric in politics feels quite loaded. How conscious were you of this political dimension?

When I was researching, I realised a lot of pickers are migrants. Then there’s this added layer of this work being invisible. I’ve been in Scotland for 12 years, and during that time sentiment has been very anti-immigration. It still is. To me, it was important to show the work that is being done which isn’t being noticed. I think that happens a lot in terms of the contributions of migrants to the UK. 

At the same time, I feel that what Aurora is going through is almost universal. When audience members speak to me, a lot of them can relate to it without having been migrants. When you’re a migrant and you’re exposed to the forces of neo-liberalism, you’re more vulnerable, because you don’t have social ties. I think that’s why the film sometimes feels harsher. We deliberately don’t know a lot about Aurora’s life because there could be very different versions of Aurora which led to this week.

How has it been presenting the film to audiences these past few months?

Immediately from that first screening, it’s been incredible to see how people engage with it and bring their own stories. I’ve had pickers that were present in screenings, who came to speak to me afterwards to thank me. Also people who say “I work in a call centre, but my life is like that.” That’s been really nice, because sometimes topics like poverty and loneliness are muddled up with self-blame and judgement, things that are hard to articulate, which we are experiencing on our own. 

For a film to be out there that puts these issues in context… That’s what I wanted to do, and it’s amazing, because that’s what people are getting out of it. Of course, the critical reception is great on a personal level, because it means I can go on and make other films. That’s definitely my goal – I’ve worked so hard to get into this industry, I don’t want to go away!

On Falling, backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund, is in cinemas from 7 March.