At a glance
- From: Switzerland and Germany
- Year: 2025
- Length: about 92 minutes
- Language: German and Swiss German, with subtitles
- For fans of: The Teachers’ Lounge, Hippocrate, Two Days, One Night
A nurse starts her shift. A colleague is ill, so she has a trainee to look after. Her first patient needs help at once, and the pressure only grows. That is the whole idea of Late Shift (Heldin in German), and it is enough to keep you tense for about 92 minutes.
The nurse is Floria, played by Leonie Benesch. She works on a hospital ward in Switzerland, and the film follows her from the afternoon into the night. Every patient has a different need: one is a rich man who is dying and behaves as if the ward belongs to him, another smokes while connected to her oxygen. Small problems arrive all the time, such as an allergy alarm, a wrong label on a medicine and a key that passes too easily from hand to hand. Floria tries to care for everyone, and there are not enough hours to do it.
The director and writer is Petra Volpe, a Swiss filmmaker who also made The Divine Order (2017), about Swiss women who fought for the right to vote. Her film is inspired by a book by Madeline Calvelage, whose title means “Our job is not the problem, it is the circumstances”. Benesch spent time with real nurses on their wards before filming, and the shoot took place in a real hospital, the Cantonal Hospital Baselland, in early 2024.
The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February 2025. Switzerland chose it as its entry for the Oscars, and it reached the shortlist, though not the final nominations. At home it was a big audience hit, with more than 207,000 cinema tickets sold, and it won the new Box Office Quartz, an award for the most popular film of the year, at the Swiss Film Awards.
The critic of Screen Daily found it “occasionally schematic”, and noted that many situations will feel familiar if you know hospital dramas. The critic also noted that the Swiss hospital looks clean and well equipped, compared with many other countries. Even so, it works. The pace is precise, the sound is full of small noises, and Benesch is superb.
If you like this, try these from Europe
- The Teachers’ Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer) 🇩🇪: Leonie Benesch again, as an idealistic young teacher who decides to deal with a theft at her school herself. It was nominated for an Oscar.
- Hippocrate 🇫🇷: a young doctor starts his first internship in a Paris hospital, in a darkly comic story.
- Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) 🇧🇪: a woman has two days and one night to persuade her colleagues to give up their bonus so that she can keep her job. By the Dardenne brothers.
Where to find it in Europe
- In Switzerland: on filmingo and Cinu, both for streaming, and on blue TV.
- In Germany: on HBO Max for subscribers, and to rent on MagentaTV and Videobuster, under the title Heldin. The distributor is Tobis.
- In France: on Canal+ for subscribers, and to rent on ARTE VOD, under the title En première ligne.
- In Spain: on Movistar Plus+, and to rent on Filmin, under the title Turno de guardia.
- In Italy: on Now, under the title L’ultimo turno.
- In the United Kingdom: on BFI Player for subscribers.
- Other countries: check your local cinema and your public broadcaster. The producer is Zodiac Pictures.
The European context
Late Shift is a Swiss and German co-production, made with the Swiss public broadcasters SRF and SRG SSR. It is a good example of a European film about ordinary work that travels far.
Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/C7o-omvW_DI
Also on Choosing Europe
- Film: Quisling: The Final Days (Quislings siste dager) 🇳🇴: another film about real people in a hard moment, told in a quiet way.
- Film: The Peasants (Chłopi) 🇵🇱: a very different film from Poland, painted frame by frame in oil.
