So here we are at our number one, Portuguese filmmaker Laura Carreira who now calls Edinburgh home. Her stunning feature-length debut On Falling charmed critics, audiences and Ken Loach with its social awareness and compassion towards those who earn a living in the most trying of circumstances. Taking stock on a memorable year, this ‘slightly stubborn’ director meets Kevin Fullerton to discuss poverty, pickers and plastic tubs.

Laura Carreira’s entrance into the world of work was cloaked in an indignity that will be familiar to anyone who’s endured a position in retail. On her first day at the now-defunct Jenners department store in Edinburgh, she was shown a jar of random nametags and asked, ‘which name do you want?’ With no Laura in the jar, and no inclination from the store to print a new tag, she wasn’t allowed her own name on the job.

The Portugal-born, Edinburgh-based filmmaker’s debut feature On Falling contains a sequence that echoes the normalisation of anonymity of working life. Set in a package fulfilment centre much like the Amazon warehouses that sit like satellite towns on the outskirts of every city, we find main character Aurora (Joana Santos) entering her manager’s office as he’s hunched over a keyboard, so swamped in busyness that he can’t break eye contact with his computer screen. She’s given a half-hearted congratulations for being ‘picker of the month’ and rewarded with a chocolate bar of her choice from a plastic tub on her manager’s desk. 

‘I remember asking, “what happens if you do well?”’ Carreira says when describing the interviews with real warehouse workers she conducted as research for the film. ‘“What is the incentive?” And they would tell me that the incentive is almost more insulting than not getting anything.’ Similar modes of infantilisation run throughout On Falling, which follows Aurora through a week-long trudge of low-paid work and poverty-line living. It paints a timely portrait of the shadowlands of our economy, taking in phone addiction, dehumanisation and the ceaseless negotiations of house sharing.

Though less than two hours long, it presents one of the most evocative depictions of late-stage capitalism’s ability to creep into every aspect of our lives, leaving no room for contemplation. Since the film’s release at the beginning of this year, critics and audiences have heaped praise on it, and it’s gained awards for Best Feature and Best Screenwriter at the Scottish BAFTAs, as well as plaudits from BIFA, the European Film Awards, the Portuguese Golden Globes and countless festivals across the world.

Remaining fixed on Aurora with a myopic intensity, Carreira’s rigorous dramatisation of minutiae breathes the same air as Chantal Akerman while updating the tradition of British social realism exemplified by Andrea Arnold and Ken Loach (the latter’s company, Sixteen Films, produced On Falling). But the journey from inscrutability to empathy is what makes Aurora’s arc so compelling; this economic outsider necessarily keeps her cards close to her chest. ‘I don’t think anyone in poverty is rushing to tell everyone about it,’ Carreira notes. ‘I think it’s possible for us to know what she’s going through without her having to ask for help. I wanted to capture that feeling of “I’m having a tough time now, but I’ll figure it out in a few days.” That’s why the film is so dark, because it’s set in a particular week where everything compounds into a tough set of circumstances.’ 

If audiences have broadly welcomed the film and its underlying message of connection and collective action, it’s because of an adept balance between the personal and the political. ‘I can understand how people can watch this film and think that’s just the world that we live in. We see those issues as faults of the individual without looking at the bigger picture. I wanted to experience these issues through Aurora, but at the same time leave a lot of space for us to look at what is actually leaving her in this situation.’

The longtail of On Falling’s success, a dream for many debut filmmakers, has been a process of balancing the need to constantly push the film further into public consciousness against Carreira moving on to her next artistic venture. ‘When I finished the film in the edit, I was like “ok, it’s done”, but I didn’t realise I would still be going to festivals a year later. It makes it very hard to push for the next release. That’s been a bit of a learning curve.’ Carreira’s next project has already taken shape, however, centring its capitalist critique within the world of middle-class office culture. ‘I have a slightly stubborn way of looking at the world. I can’t help but look at how we live, our routine. I feel like my camera somehow is going to go there, because that’s what’s keeping me up at night.’

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