Film-maker Tomisin Adepeju has curated and will be hosting a screening and discussion of Laura Carreira’s extraordinary debut feature, On Falling.

Winner of the Best Director Prize at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2024 and the Sutherland Award at BFI London Film Festival 2024, On Falling is a deeply affecting portrait of Aurora, a lonely Portuguese migrant working as a picker in a Scottish warehouse. Through acute observations of her degrading work environment and the solitude of her personal life, Carreira masterfully immerses us in Aurora’s interior reality. On Falling is an indelible illustration of a culture of systemic indifference and a study on loneliness and alienation.

Carreira’s work is a timely and resounding piece of social realist cinema that heralds the arrival of an urgent and important voice.

We’re very excited to present this potent and masterfully constructed piece of work.

LAURA CARREIRA

Laura Carreira is a Portuguese filmmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland.​ Her first short film Red Hill won the New Visions Award at the 73rd Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Short Film award at the 2019 BAFTA Scotland Awards. Her short film The Shift premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2020 and was nominated for the European Film Awards and the London Critics' Circle Film Awards. In 2021 it won the New Talent Award at IndieLisboa. In 2022, Laura was named one of the Rising Stars Scotland by Screen International magazine.

Her debut feature film On Falling was produced by Sixteen Films and BRO Cinema - with the support of the BFI, BBC Films, Screen Scotland, ICA and Goodfellas. On Falling had its World premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2024 and its European premiere at the 72nd San Sebastián Film Festival where Laura won the Silver Shell for Best Director. The film also won the Sutherland Award at the 68th BFI London Film Festival.

Her second feature film is under development with Film4.

JACK THOMAS O’BRIEN

Jack has been working at Sixteen Films for the past eight years – and now works as a producer at the company.

His upcoming feature film ‘On Falling’ produced through Sixteen Films is a coproduction with Bro Cinema in Lisbon, will be sold by Goodfellas, and is financed by BBC Film, Screen Scotland & the BFI, along with the ICA. ‘On Falling’ had its world premiere at TIFF, and won the Silver Shell for Best Director in the main competition at San Sebastian, and the Sutherland Best Debut film in competition at LFF. In the last two years he worked as associate producer on Ken Loach’s latest film ‘The Old Oak’, and received an Executive Producer credit on Athina Tsangari’s forthcoming feature ‘Harvest’.

TOMISIN ADEPEJU

Tomisin Adepeju is a British-Nigerian filmmaker, writer and curator based in London. His award-winning shorts have screened at over 150 film festivals, including Sundance, BFI London Film Festival and London Short Film Festival. He has just completed a new short, Journey Mercies which recently played in competition at BAFTA-Qualifying London Short Film Festival 2025. 

He is currently developing his debut feature, The Light of the Living with Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films and BFI. Tomisin's writings have appeared on MUBI, Sight and Sound and several other publications. He is the founder of DAILIES, a screening programme where he regularly curates shorts and feature films. He has programmed sold out events at BFI Southbank, Rich Mix and other spaces.