Some mornings have birdsong. The melancholy On Falling has beeps — disembodied signals that fill its opening scenes. One set greets the ID badges of the “pickers” arriving for work at a Glasgow online fulfilment centre. Another sounds whenever those pickers use a barcode scanner to tick off DIY equipment or a pair of yoga pants. A third is higher pitched — an alarm the scanner gives off when the picker takes longer than deemed necessary to find their next item.
Eventually, human dialogue enters. But a world has already been sketched out with that digital overture, and what we hear between it — silence. In fact, that might be the most tell-tale sound of all in a sad and perceptive film about 21st-century loneliness, centred on Aurora, a 30-ish Portuguese picker (deftly played by Joana Santos).
Director Laura Carreira is also Portuguese; On Falling is her first feature. But sharp eyes will note the role of producers Sixteen Films, co-founded by veteran British firebrand Ken Loach. You sense a baton being passed, not least with the story suggesting a double bill with Sorry We Missed You, Loach’s scalding 2019 portrait of online retail delivery.
But that movie ran on fury. The mood in On Falling is a shade of blue, precisely rendered in small gestures and fleeting moments. As Aurora drifts into ever deeper solitude, the film has the economy of a haiku. And though the job is unfeeling, Carreira isn’t making a j’accuse as much as a point about the modern network of isolation this type of work embodies — but is only one part of.
In 2025, On Falling says, the real in social realism endures. It is the social that is withering. When the film does find room for raucous little scenes of friendship and bonhomie, the glow warms us too. More often, though, the characters quietly drop their heads into their phones, alone together, as somewhere their digital presence is recorded.
★★★★☆
In UK cinemas from March 7