VIFF '25: Late Shift

Cinema has the majestic virtue of bringing us closer to realities that we often ignore or even reject. In this case, we do not have a conventional hero or someone whose goal is to save the world, or even save a person, because that is not within their capabilities.

Late Shift introduces us to a nurse named Floria and how she deals with all the problems that arise during a single night, attending to every need that comes her way while we watch closely her successes, her mistakes, and the desperation of so many families.

The first thing that struck me was how tense the film is without resorting to easy melodrama or simplistic compassion. Usually, in other stories, Floria would be a secondary or even tertiary character: someone who appears to give a diagnosis, administer medicine, or deliver bad news. Here, however, we see everything that goes on behind that façade, the abuse, the endless requests, the saturation of information that comes in such a short time.

Contrary to many reviews where I like to dwell on the technical aspects, here I couldn't do so. Petra Biondina's direction captivated me from the very first moment, to the point that I stopped analysing and let myself be carried away by the story. The film is not shot in a false sequence shot, but it feels like one: characters coming and going, situations overlapping, patients appearing and disappearing in the viewer's memory as well as in the protagonist's own. This confusion is intentional, and it works to make us experience the same exhaustion and tension as she does.

At the centre is Leonie Benesch, who had already shown impressive mettle in The Teacher's Lounge. Here she once again plays a character who is neither victim nor heroine, but a receptacle of constant pressure. Her presence is sustained not only by her performance, but also by the editing, which accompanies her resilience without falling into melodramatic exaggeration. I wouldn't be surprised if she is talked about more enthusiastically than other films that seek tension through excess.

As someone who recently spent a lot of time in hospitals due to my wife's pregnancy, I am particularly sensitive to the work of nurses. We talked to them in their spare time and they told us how hard it is to get to the end of a shift caring for someone else after so many hours. The film captures that feeling very well, but it also poses a dilemma: Floria sometimes denies her colleagues the same understanding we demand for her. We see this in her treatment of the intern who assists her, or in the way she judges patients, who appear to be whiny or demanding, when in reality their discomfort stems from a system that is failing them in the most vital way: their health.

This is where the film's strongest duality emerges: on the one hand, the dehumanisation implied by the relationship between patient and healthcare system, and on the other, the humanisation of recognising how far a single person can go in the midst of an immense task. Late Shift does not seek heroes, it seeks to show us the weight of everyday life when that everyday life is a matter of life and death.