‘Late Shift’ review: Leonie Benesch excels as a Swiss nurse under pressure

Dir/scr: Petra Volpe. Switzerland/Germany, 2025. 92 mins

Late Shift is a finely-strung hospital drama from Switzerland starring the phenomenal German actor Leonie Benesch which will twang on the nerves of any past, present or future patient, and the hearts of those who owe a debt of gratitude to a nurse. Which is to say, all of us. Occasionally schematic, albeit only in the service of pricking our consciences, Petra Volpe’s tense drama is a shot in the arm of undiluted empathy for the over-stretched, under-valued nursing profession.

Not just a normal hospital drama but a global cry for help

Volpe (The Divine Order, Dreamland) is certainly not the first to open the doors to the ER, but this is an almost electrically-sensitive venture into territory normally dominated by TV drama or the masculine energy of films such as Bringing Out The Dead. The risks are everyday, but cumulative, as one nurse starts her afternoon/evening stint at a Swiss hospital with a staff member down and a trainee to look after. It is, of course, life and death, and what can ever be more dramatic than that, even if the lives are small and the deaths are quiet? Led by admiration for Benesch in two recent Oscar-nominated films The Teachers’ Lounge and September 5, Night Shift will almost certainly attract attention and recognition for her performance.

The elephant in the nurses’ room is the gleaming state of the Swiss hospital system, under groaning pressure here but still a digitally-led world away from health systems in third world countries (or even the UK’s crumbling NHS). Pressure is still pressure, though, and human dramas, small and large, play out in much the same way on any hospital ward. Although the thrust of the film is dramatic, it’s underlying drive is humane and its appeal is global.

Drenched in sterile lights and hospital blues, Late Shift starts off with a shot of a laundry line of cleanly-pressed uniforms, setting its stall as a slice of drama which is continuous as Nurse Floria arrives in the staff changing room. There’s mention of a day off with a small child, and a new pair of trainers are unboxed, but that’s the last minute of calm for this competent, anxious health worker. Before she even gets to her station, she has been derailed by an incontinent elderly woman. We can see Floria is patient, able and compassionate, but also under rising levels of stress due to all of those characteristics. She takes her job seriously and if anything, is over-conscientious.

A belter of a score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch – not to mention the heart-rending end-credits ‘Hope There’s Someone’ by Ahnoni – is punctuated by the never-ending beep of machines and the rip of velcro as the day-shift winds down and the pressure on Floria ramps up. There’s plenty about Late Shift that will be very familiar to adepts of hospital dramas: the allergy klaxon; the mislabelled medication; the ominous key to a lethal medicine cupboard that is rather freely swapped around. The businessman dying of pancreatic cancer in the luxe private patient room is an entitled asshole. And the student nurse is a liability, along with the alcoholic lady who insists on smoking with her oxygen canister attached.

Those aren’t the elements that distinguish Late Shift, but they help its 92 minutes zip along. What is more important, and somehow consoling, is the vulnerability of nurse and patient, and their strange, intimate, but by necessity brief relationship. Dependency and need shuffle up against time and the lack of it, as well as the ending of it. One woman, given a clear bill of health, decides that she will leave her job as soon as she gets out of the hospital and greedily grab another chance at life. Another will not live through the night.

Apparently Benesch spent some time learning with nurses on wards, and her poise here feels professional and apt as Floria tries to get through another evening with harm to none – including herself. Editing is precise and modulated, building and relaxing, and starting up again. As with the clothes in the first shot, you see and feel the cycle – day, night, life, death. Viewers will be relieved as Floria when the night shift arrives; but the cycle continues and Late Shift pays tribute to those who somehow make it work. End credits point out how endangered Floria’s profession is, making this not just a normal hospital drama but a global cry for help.