When Nurse Floria Lind (Leonie Benesch) checks in for the night shift, her patience is immediately thinned when she finds out the ward is understaffed.

Late Shift, at times, can be relentless in its bleakness, but this is also the film’s strength. Petra Biondina Volpe, the director behind the film, makes a difficult yet important watch out of the nursing crisis Switzerland is facing, yet the film is easily applied to a global perspective.

Volpe’s brutal honesty could be a turn-off for some, but it’s effective in painting a realistic picture of the relationships we have with nurses. We see how we expect so much, even if the resources aren’t in place. 

The film struck me when bringing the text to a UK perspective, as it reminded me of the National Health Service. You have excellent people like Lind working tirelessly to keep these institutions alive, even if they’re a dying horse left limping. There is a growing sense that the NHS could be heading towards privatization, which completely goes against the principle on which it was founded by Aneurin Bevan–to provide free healthcare for individuals.

We see political parties such as Reform stating they would be open to different methods of funding, or current Health Minister Wes Streeting getting more than 60% of registered donations from companies or individuals linked to the private sector. Even though Volpe made Late Shift from a Swiss healthcare perspective, it hits close to home.

The film feels a little complex as it introduces the idea of private health replacing public, but it doesn’t quite lean into the angle fully. The Swiss system requires private insurance on top of basic public insurance, so the ideas feel muddled to an outsider. Visually, we see this in the ward during Lind’s shift. There is one patient who has private insurance and has his own room, but every other patient is on basic, so they have to share a room. There is an interesting discussion to be had on how both private and public health can coexist. 

Despite the film’s shortcomings, Volpe excellently crafts a hectic atmosphere. A sense of restlessness is set right from the start, where we see Lind enter the hospital, and she has to go through a brutalist hallway to the changing room before her shift. There is a sense of compactness–everything is tight, and through the grey stone that covers the hallway, it communicates a coldness.

The restless, building pressure is felt through the actors, too.  There’s a short moment where Lind has to take deep breaths before she leaves the elevator to enter the ward, and, while it’s a simple move from Benesch, it communicates all that pressure more than any words. Benesch’s performance as Lind is fantastic; you fully buy into the sense that she is drowning, just trying to get through her shift like anyone else doing their job.

For the bleak and stressful moments, though, there are also quiet and touching moments. One that sticks out with me the most occurs when Lind sings to an elderly woman with dementia to console her. The woman joins in on the singing, and you suddenly see her find peace. She’s her joyful self again; it’s a lovely sequence. Even though Lind is under constant pressure, it’s moments like these that highlight her willingness to be there for her patients during their most vulnerable moments.

Falling into a large, complex discussion about public and private healthcare, Late Shift, with its hectic atmosphere and wonderful lead performance, highlights the continuous pressure that nurses in all healthcare institutions face when infrastructure fails.

Review Courtesy of Matthew Allan

Feature Image Credit Vertigo via IMDb