In recent years, I have spent a great deal of time in hospitals. During those stays, I have gained a great respect for the immense dedication found in the nursing profession. (I am now almost reflexively willing to support any strike they engage in.) My last stay was in August and September 2025 for an anxious two weeks. So, I am probably being somewhat masochistic in reviewing writer/director Petra Volpe’s “Late Shift”—an extremely realistic depiction of a modern, glistening, but badly understaffed hospital in Switzerland.
The film focuses completely on Floria (Leonie Benesch), a single-mom nurse who works under intense pressure to handle an overload of patients. She is compassionate and conscientious but also capable of making mistakes and losing control with one patient. Still, the original German title is “Heldin” (“Heroine”), so it is clear how Volpe sees her.
We know little about Floria personally, but Benesch convincingly makes her an intelligent, humane professional who is utterly committed to her patients and her job. We see her walking endlessly on her rounds and at times stopping for brief professional talk with other nurses about patients. All her movements are tracked with consummate fluidity by a handheld camera, and the film provides a sense of real time.
It is an arduous, even overwhelming job, but she is usually able to show patience and even much sympathy for her patients.
She calms one old woman with dementia by singing the German lullaby “The Moon Has Risen,” and the woman shakily joins in. It is a truly moving moment.
Some patients respond well and are grateful for her very human professionalism; others feel that she and the hospital have failed to respond to their needs and constantly complain.
However, it is clear that two nurses cannot handle this number of patients without something going wrong. And the patients are forced to wait too long for doctors to see them.
The film falters toward its conclusion, seeking to end on an upbeat note. The one privileged, private insurance patient—who has pancreatic cancer and has viciously berated Floria—suddenly becomes more sympathetic, and they find a language for a civil exchange. The film’s final montage is a little too facile, with mournful music stretching across all of Floria’s patients. Still, the film makes a strong social statement about the worldwide need for more nurses, and Benesch is utterly convincing as a beleaguered but model nurse.
