On Falling

On Falling – A stark and unflinching look at the gig economy.

From the production team behind I, Daniel Blake and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, On Falling arrives with an air of inevitability—this will not be a happy film.
Instead, it is a sobering and humane exploration of modern-day alienation in the gig economy.

At its centre is Aurora (played brilliantly by Joana Santos), a Portuguese immigrant working as a warehouse picker in a vast, soulless “fulfilment” centre in Scotland. Her life is a cycle of physical exhaustion and emotional isolation, trapped between the warehouse floor and a multi room flatshare that she cannot afford.

One of the film’s most powerful visual metaphors arrives midway through—a package, stuck on the incline of a conveyor belt, rolling on the spot. It’s a stark image that encapsulates the stagnation of the gig economy, where workers are trapped in an endless loop. Though never explicitly named, we know the warehouse is based on Amazon, a real life omnipresent corporate spectre that looms over the film’s themes.

Subtle yet devastating moments punctuate Aurora’s journey. A particularly moving scene lingers on her hand being held while having makeup applied in a shop - a moment of human connection that feels painfully rare. Other moments are more blunt in their critique: mesh barriers being erected on upper floors recall Apple’s response to worker suicides in Chinese IPhone factories, while the casual banter following a co-worker’s suicide, serves as a grim echo of real-life incidents on Amazon’s warehouse floors, where workers have reported high levels of anxiety and depression, plus a spate of deaths which the corporation attempted to cover up.
This film hits out a lot harder at Amazon than Nomadland, criticised for being too light on the company (perhaps unsurprisingly Nomadland was allowed to shoot inside a real Amazon warehouse, On Falling did not).

Director Laura Carreira crafts an unflinching portrayal of the dehumanising nature of this work. Random drug tests, humiliating “rewards” (such as a chocolate bar for high performance), and the ultimate insult— skint, tired, workers forced to cheer for the company’s booming sales while listening to management tout “sustainability”—lay bare the hypocrisy at play in this industry. The film also subtly critiques the financial traps of capitalism. When Aurora’s phone breaks, it is more than just an inconvenience—it’s her only lifeline. She is forced to spend everything to fix it, highlighting the precarious existence of those living paycheck to paycheck.

Visually, On Falling is stark and symbolic. The camera lingers on the monotony of the daily work, reinforcing its repetitive drudgery. The first time we see daylight is over halfway through the film when she calls in sick and goes into town, a shock to the viewer and an indictment of the shift patterns that rob workers of the most basic human needs.

Yet, for all its bleakness, the film does not entirely abandon hope. Moments of kindness - a man looking after Aurora in the park, a sympathetic woman at a job interview, and Aurora’s own quiet empathy for those around her—suggest that Carreira still believes in the endurance of the human spirit. The film’s surprising final act, in which workers play a game during a power outage, provides a rare and welcome moment of unity.

On Falling is an urgent and necessary film—one that forces us to confront the human cost of our convenience-driven consumerism.

If there is a frustration, it is not with Carreira’s execution, which is masterful for a directorial debut, but with the crushing reality that films like this may change little. As corporations tighten their grip on the world, stories like On Falling are more essential than ever.