Low pay and a life lived in beige… Laura Carreira explores lonely reality of immigrant experience in new film On Falling

Filmmaker Laura Carreira’s experiences when she first moved to Scotland fed into the plot of her debut feature, On Falling.

It tells the story of a Portuguese immigrant, played by Joana Santos, who works in an unfulfilling, low-paid job as a warehouse picker in a large fulfilment centre and spends her evenings in a flat share, where she needs to label her food in the communal kitchen.

“Shared flats, minimum-wage jobs, that sense of losing social ties to a country and needing to start over again, those were all things I experienced,” explained Laura, who moved from Portugal in 2012 to study at the University of Edinburgh.

“The shared flats definitely marked me. When we were making the film, I said the flats had to be decorated in beige, as that seemed to be the colour of every flat I lived in.”

On Falling

On Falling is a film about loneliness and alienation, and the struggle to find meaning and connection. Despite the central character Aurora’s feelings of isolation, she is constantly surrounded by people. But that doesn’t mean much if she has no real interaction with them.

“It was a surprise to me during the casting process that we had 55 speaking roles – even though it’s a story very much about isolation, she interacts with a lot of people,” Laura said.

“We wanted to be as diverse as possible, to have accents.

“We have very good actors in the film, but we also wanted to include different nationalities, and it was hard to find professional actors in the UK from those countries. We had an open casting for non-professional actors, where we had people send us a video talking about themselves. That gave us a sense of the roles they would be suitable for.”

That mix of professional and non-professional actors is a trademark of Ken Loach’s films, as is the sense of real-life, topical issues covered in the film, so it feels like a perfect fit that Loach’s production company, Sixteen Films, came on board as producers early in the process.

“It was such a privilege to get to work with them. From the moment they saw my short films and read the script, we never stopped talking until it was made,” Laura said. “They welcomed using non-actors and filming in real locations.

“We managed almost to film the story in order. That’s the way they’ve worked with Ken and it was really good to benefit from those elements.”

Researching the film

Laura interviewed a number of people who have worked as warehouse pickers as part of her research, and the stories they told her – like being given a bar of chocolate as a reward for working quickly – have been included in the movie.

Central to the film’s success is Joana Santos as Aurora.

“It was a long search – we watched around 600 self-tapes to try to find the right actor,” Laura said. “Joana stood out straight away – we realised she had something special. She saw the character in a compassionate way.

“She had a quietness about her, but we couldn’t take our eyes away from her, which felt like a good sign.

“She had never lived away from Portugal before, so it was an experience of being elsewhere, of another language. She was self-conscious about the language, but for us it was a strong aspect about her, because it fed into the character’s difficulty in communicating.”

Having already been shown at international film festivals – and picked up awards at San Sebastian and BFI London – On Falling receives its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival, and goes on general release next week.

“A lot of the cast and crew are based in Glasgow, so it was special for them to see it in the city with the public,” Laura added.

“I’ve been travelling with the film since last September – to places like Toronto and Egypt – so it was like a homecoming.”

On Falling is on tonight at 8.30pm and tomorrow at 1pm at the Glasgow Film Theatre. The film is in cinemas from Friday.