20/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: The Teachers’ Lounge’s Leonie Benesch gives a stellar performance in Petra Volpe’s new hospital drama

Leonie Benesch in Late Shift

Petra Volpe’s Late Shift [+see also:
interview: Petra Volpe
film profile] is a film with a cause: preceding the end credits is a statistic on the global nurse shortage, which constitutes an ongoing health crisis. Saving this warning for last makes the film, screening in Berlinale's Berlinale Special section, all the more chilling, a premonition of times to come, if the scarcity of nurses in the milieu of hospital care worsens (and it most certainly will). It’s obvious that the Swiss director behind The Divine Order [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Petra Volpe
film profile] and Dreamland has approached the topic from a genuine point of concern, since the film is, firstly, impeccably made and, secondly, a well-paced and -structured fiction with the raw intensity of a hospital setting.

Starring The Teachers’ Lounge [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: İlker Çatak
interview: Leonie Benesch
film profile] breakout Leonie Benesch and lensed by cinematographer Judith Kaufmann (also The Teachers’ Lounge as well as Corsage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marie Kreutzer
interview: Marie Kreutzer
film profile]), Late Shift employs all of the tools of a solid (humanistic) thriller to immerse the viewer in an impossibly paced world of duty, responsibilities and procedures where mistakes often come at a lethal cost. At the beginning of the movie, nurse Floria (Benesch) takes over the afternoon shift following a day off: she is smiley, very patient and quick on her feet. With only two nurses and a shadowing student on duty, the day promises some difficulties, yet Volpe’s script steers away from making it all seem too spectacular. What ensues plays out in what seems like real time (even if it isn’t), thanks to the long, handheld takes and the extensive tracking shots tracing Floria’s every move: a lot happens, and it keeps escalating, but one must remember that this is just how it goes, every day in every hospital around the world.

With the surgical ward fully occupied and understaffed, Floria seems used to the rhythm of it all – Benesch is softly spoken and her gaze is always forgiving, even when the patients don’t warrant it completely. She is a trustworthy figure through and through. Her rounds get constantly interrupted by calls from other patients or the phone ringing in her pocket, so the audience is always conscious of just how much she has to juggle at any given time. Late Shift contracts and expands time whenever needed, making sure the patients get full attention (from both the nurse and the viewer), which in turn saves the picture from becoming an ode to an idealised nursing figure.

For Benesch, who’s already demonstrated resilience and the ability to channel a lot of what her character isn’t saying through her physical performance, the role of nurse Floria is no less challenging than that of Miss Nowak in The Teachers’ Lounge. In particular, the long, uninterrupted takes of reshelving medicine, grabbing vials and prepping shots for a dozen patients at once are so arresting to watch thanks to the whole performance being concentrated in Benesch’s adept hands. Overall, the filmmaking craft behind it makes Late Shift soar, as it not only extracts tension from natural sources (a day on the surgical ward), but also retains full commitment to an urgently accurate representation of social issues that we often take for granted.

Late Shift was produced by Zodiac Pictures (Switzerland), in co-production with Germany’s MMC Zodiac and Swiss Radio and Television. TrustNordisk handles the film’s world sales.

Photogallery 17/02/2025: Berlinale 2025 - Late Shift

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Petra Volpe, Leonie Benesch, Judith Kaufmann
© 2024 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - dario-caruso.fr, @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso