Berlinale 2025: Petra Volpe’s ‘Late Shift’ is a Riveting Tribute to Nurses
by Alex Billington
February 19, 2025
In case you’ve ever frolicked at a hospital, you know the way extremely exhausting working and devoted nurses are. And the way important they’re to protecting a hospital functioning whereas taking good care of all the sufferers. This Swiss movie premiering on the 2025 Berlin Movie Competition is a tribute to nurses whereas additionally appearing as an pressing name to the world to ensure there are sufficient nurses working to maintain everybody all around the world. Heldin (which interprets to Heroine in German) is the newest characteristic movie made by the exceptionally proficient Swiss filmmaker Petra Volpe, her third characteristic movie following Dreamland and The Divine Order (one other certainly one of my favorites from 2017 – I interviewed Volpe in the course of the launch again then). The movie is an intimate, intense, riveting thriller following Floria, a devoted & caring nurse, who works the late shift within the most cancers ward at an overcrowded, understaffed hospital in Switzerland. It is a sensible tribute to many wonderful, overworked nurses by exhibiting us precisely what their work is like each single day. That is severely highly effective filmmaking.
Written and directed by Petra Volpe, Heldin can be titled Late Shift in English, although I choose the unique title of “Heroine” higher as a result of these individuals actually are heroes. Regardless that we’re all used to calling docs heroes, and they’re too, we additionally owe a lot to all the nurses who put in such a unprecedented quantity of labor as effectively. The great German actress Leonie Benesch (greatest recognized for her roles in The Academics’ Lounge and September 5) stars because the nurse Floria, who tirelessly serves in an understaffed hospital ward which cares for a lot of most cancers sufferers. The movie follows her over the course of 1 lengthy evening. This night, her shift turns into a tense and pressing race in opposition to the clock. The movie typically feels prefer it’s shot as a real-time, one-long-take thriller, although that is actually simply because the filmmaking is so dynamic and fascinating. It pulls us proper in & by no means lets up, as if we’re shadowing Floria on her shift, studying from her as we observe. It is a demanding movie to look at however fortunately not as miserable or upsetting because it may very well be – as an alternative it truly feels hopeful and galvanizing and uplifting by the top. Not simple to drag off, particularly when making an attempt to make some extent.
Each minute of this movie appears so pure, I am unable to imagine all of those individuals had been actors (or had been they??), it was like they simply took a digicam and adopted her round a Swiss hospital for some time interacting with actual sufferers. Completely distinctive filmmaking in each manner that deserves accolades. The cinematography and camerawork by German DP Judith Kaufmann additionally deserves additional popularity of being so naturalistic but so cinematic and clean. Leonie Benesch is extraordinary, once more, following up her iconic position in The Academics’ Lounge with one other tremendous demanding efficiency that captures all the feelings – massive and small – that include this job. This movie actually is great and I am unable to cease raving about it. What works greatest is that although it’s kind of unsettling to spend this a lot time in a hospital, a spot the place most individuals do not ever get pleasure from spending time, it is entrancing and empathetic. It is entertaining and shifting , actually emphasizing that it is a movie about how we want deal with nurses with extra respect and admiration. They are surely important staff, deserving of correct pay & remedy, and this new movie makes that message extra clear than ever.
Alex’s Berlinale 2025 Score: 8.5 out of 10
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