Critics reviews

Carreira reveals herself to be, like Loach in his finest hours, a socially conscious filmmaker as invested in idiosyncratic character as in more universal polemic... [On Falling] delivers an excoriating verdict on a modern Britain characterized by compassionless labor politics, stagnant opportunity and shrugging acceptance of a stifling status quo.

While the film pleads with us to pity Aurora and her sorry lot, it does very little to contextualise her dire situation... Santos delivers a committed performance as this hapless lost soul, yet the film is too intent on feathering out its dismal thesis on an existence for which suicide, for many, offers a sweet release.

Carreira, working with Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films, proves herself an empathetic inheritor of his mantle with an enveloping portrait of loneliness which doesn’t ask for pity or outrage... There is every reason for excitement about Carreira’s future.

[A] hypnotic debut... The most likely criticism of On Falling is that we never get the sense of how far Aurora has fallen; how she came to Scotland and why she has no support network. But there’s a sense that this is not Carreira’s prime concern. The overriding theme of her film... is the dehumanizing effect of the free market.

Carreira is aiming for a subdued tone and rhythm that mimic the pain of a horrible day’s work, but real-world details in her film could be more precisely rendered than they are... and we also might disagree on the story’s defeatism... Yet the film still makes the apt point that work without fulfilment is no work at all.

This is a simple but effective character-driven drama... Carreira provokes a conversation with this barbed but compassionate glimpse into the human condition, using simple techniques to tell a poignant story that is both insightful and genuinely moving.

On Falling is a palpably real movie. It neither romanticises nor fetishises its protagonist. And it never slips into didacticism... On Falling is a palpably real movie. It neither romanticises nor fetishises its protagonist. And it never slips into didacticism.

Each scene is a miniature marvel... and the cumulative emotional stakes only stack up as Carriera directs her own screenplay, which possesses no excess... The sophistication that has gone into crafting Aurora’s psyche is phenomenal and the mapping of this onto a specific type of labor is what makes “On Falling” a masterful calling card.

Outstanding... On Falling shows us a world of sadness and exhaustion, a kind of heavy cloud cover of depression that is both a symptom of the job and a way of getting through it... This is a very impressive debut.