Portuguese/Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira wowed the film festival circuit when On Falling premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival 2024 followed by a San Sebastián Film Festival Silver Shell win for Best Director and since then, her feature debut recently landed a quartet of noms at the 2025 British Independent Film Awards. Falling in the sub-genre of cinema that explores the underbelly of barcode zapping workers the film presents a stark critique of modern capitalism, illustrating how low-wage, digitally-monitored labor leads to alienation and a loss of identity, reducing workers to faceless drones. In a quiet performance, actress Joana Santos breathes life into what crippling loneliness and slow-motion trauma look like – it also seconds as a social-realist showcase on those exile.
A film that is at times bleak and not without hope, back at TIFF, I had a chance to speak to the filmmaker exploring her work with cinematographer Karl Kurten, how producer Jack Thomas-O’Brien joined the project, the visual strategies and how the idea of setting this in the backdrop of a workplace came about.
