A study of loneliness, with a Glasgow backdrop

Glasgow Film Festival opened this week, with stars like Tim Roth, Ed Harris, and Jessica Lange arriving to show off work like ‘Tornado’, an 18th century Samurai thriller, and ‘Long Day's Journey into Night’, a family drama set in Connecticut. In noticeably short supply are films actually produced in Glasgow — which is why I was psyched to see the city in 'On Falling', the debut feature from writer-director Laura Carreira.

The film, which gets its Scottish premiere at the festival today, has already collected awards at San Sebastián, London, and Angers film festivals, depicts the life of Aurora (played by Joana Santos with restrained intensity), a picker in an Amazon-like warehouse. There's no backstory about how Aurora ended up in Scotland from Portugal, working in the gig economy, or living in a grim flatshare. But she does emerge from the anonymous non-spaces of the central belt, we see every detail of her joyless existence in… Edinburgh! Despite the interiors being filmed in Glasgow, the city yet again does not get to play itself. 

With its grid layout and grand buildings, Glasgow has become a popular backdrop for Hollywood blockbusters like ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’, ‘The Batman’, and ‘World War Z’. One of the main reasons for this is its affordability: the council offers tax breaks and is willing to shut down city streets despite the disruption caused. But in recent years, some like David Archibald, Professor of Political Cinemas at the University of Glasgow and frontman of The Tenementals, have bemoaned that Glasgow is always a stand-in for other cities.