Directed by Petra Volpe, Late Shift stars Leonie Benesch (The Teachers' Lounge, September 5) as Floria, a nurse in the surgical ward of a Swiss hospital about to clock in for the late shift. What follows is the most nail-biting account of an everyday shift that you'll have seen on screen this year: it's a 92-minute demonstration of what it really means for a hospital to be "short-staffed."
Volpe's kinetic script doesn't recount Floria's shift in real-time, but it feels like it. The writer-director has spoken in interviews about wanting to honor the "athleticism" of nursing; Floria doesn't stop, because the job doesn't allow her to.
